Hello & Happy New Year

I hope you will find the return of what I hope will be a weekly blog a useful way to keep in touch with Wilts & Berks and other canal matters
My role with the Wilts & Berks Canal restoration is to help advise the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and other partner organistaions. You can see some of the work of the Wiltshire Swindon & Oxfordshire Canal Partnership at www.canalpartnership.org.uk . We aslo have a Twitter feed @wiltsberkscanal . 
So after enjoying the long Christmas & New Year Break it was back to work on Tuesday.
I was delighted to see that intitial works have started at Royal Wootton Bassett on the Templars Firs Extension which will eventually bring the canal  to Marlborougn Road.
On my list this week has been working with WBCT on two consultations for Swindon Wichelstowe and looking again at options of how the canal will cross under the M4
We hope that very soon that the Trust's planning application for the Melksham Link will be in a position to  be considerd by a Wiltshire Council Planning Committee.
Also on the 'nearly there' list is a major piece of work  being carried out by consulatants Peter Brett Associates who are mapping the the existing ecology on the canal line to help with future planning applications.
On Thursday I was invited to what turned out to be a marathon session of WBCT's Executive.
Delighted to hear at the meeting that WBCT is close to signing a lease on a further section of the canal in Oxfordshire  and we spent some time looking at another strategic section of the canal connecting Royal Wootton Bassett  to Swindon.
Following the meeting it has been agreed that I will help WBCT to submit a planning application at Stockham Farm (Grove). As part of a planning condition on an adjacent development, when this application has been successfully determined they will transfer a section of the canal to WBCT .
We also heard at the meeting from Sheila about the plans for a Towpath Festival in September  directly linked to a campaign to increase the number of  members of WBCT.
I am pleased to see every time I visit the Peterborough Arms that the great works by the team are edging closer to completion of the first phase of fully opening the ground floor area. 

Elsewhere I have  just completed work with the Cotswold Canals Trust for a planning application for Roundhouse Farm (nr Martson Meysey), and on the Kennet & Avon I am help CRT to get some new signage installed at Devizes Wharf.
Interestingly Information Boards will be a recurring theme as I have started some work to look at the Boards that describe Wiltshire's 9 White Horses at various locations and I am working on a programme of new boards for the Wilts & Berks - all of these will also have audio trails as part of the installation.

More next week

Ken
@canalken