Canal Boat — February 2018

64 February 2018 Canal Boat canalboat.co.uk

RESTORATION

effort has been concentrated on the

western end of the route, where the Phase

1a length (Stonehouse to near

Brimscombe) is almost complete, and a

recently resubmitted bid for £10m from the

Heritage Lottery Fund aims to reopen the

Phase 1b length which will connect this to

the national network at Saul Junction. But

the Trust sees it as important to keep

making progress elsewhere along the

route – including Inglesham.

The southernmost Canal Camp for this

year is being hosted by the Wey & Arun

Canal Trust, and it involves two projects

• neither of them directly connected with
  navigation, but both contributing to the
  long-term plan of reopening to boats. A
  new worksite at Birtley, south of Bramley,
  will see volunteers reinstating the towpath
  as a first step towards restoring this
  length. And at the north end of the canal
  near where it met the River Wey, WRG will
  be building a boardwalk and setting up the
  site for a visitor centre, as part of a park
  which has been created on land where one
  day the new northern length of the canal
  will be built.

Up to now, much of the Trust’s work has

been concentrated on sections further

south around Loxwood. This year’s WRG

sites (together with a recent project to

build a new bridge and slipway on the

canal’s summit at Dunsfold) are helping to

spread the focus of work along the route –

with a view eventually linking them up,

‘join the dots’ style, and reopening the

whole of ‘London’s lost route to the sea’.

THE MIDLANDS

Another waterway hosting its first Canal

Camp for several years is the Lichfield,

where volunteers will be building a

towpath and retaining bank to enable a

short length of canal at Fosseway Park

near Lichfield to be re-watered. Initially it

will form a wetland nature reserve; in the

longer term, the Lichfield & Hatherton

Canals Restoration Trust’s current Tunnel

Vision Appeal aims to raise £1m to create a

canal culvert under a railway line, which

will help to link this length up to other

restored sections near Lichfield.

Ultimately the aim is to complete the six

mile route (and the similar length

Hatherton Canal) and recreate two

through routes to the northern

Birmingham Canal Navigations.

There hasn’t been much WRG activity

on the Derby Canal recently, or indeed

much volunteer work at all ‘on the ground’

• the Derby & Sandiacre Canal Trust has
  been more concerned with the political
  background work – but all that’s changing.
  The volunteers are aiming to complete the
  restoration of Borrowash Lock, which was
  begun some years ago, with a view to
  re-watering a length of canal between
  Derby and Sandiacre.
  At the same time, the Trust’s volunteers
  have begun work at Sandiacre where the
  canal meets the Erewash, a mile of canal at
  Draycott is the subject of a fundraising
  drive, and there are plans for an eye-
  catching boat-lift to connect the canal to
  Derby city centre, all of which will form
  part of the eventual through route from
  Sandiacre to Derby and Swarkestone.
  A regular worksite for several years now
  is Woolsthorpe Locks on the Grantham
  Canal, where WRG has been supporting
  the Grantham Canal Society’s Lottery-
  funded project to restore two of the seven
  locks. Lock 15 has turned out to be more
  of a rebuild than a restoration, as the
  chamber walls had moved inwards and
  needed to be demolished, but the end is in
  sight and WRG’s volunteers hope to move
  on to begin the dismantling phase of Lock
  14 this summer.
  With three locks (16 to 18) restored
  some years ago, that leaves 12 and 13 to
  do – which would create a navigable length

THE NORTH

Only one canal in the North of England

features in WRG’s canal camps

programme for this year: the disused

northern reaches of the Lancaster Canal.

This is another canal where re-lining a

leaky section of canal with modern lining

materials hasn’t gone entirely to plan, and

the volunteers will be aiming to fix the

problems.

The aim is to enable the Lancaster

Canal Trust’s ‘first furlong’ project to

be completed by re-watering the first

part of the dry northernmost length of

the canal, extending range of the

Trust’s trip-boat, and contributing to

the long-term plan to reopen the canal

all the way from the current limit of

navigation at Tewitfield back to

Kendal.

Lancaster Canal: this length needs to be made watertight

Grantham Lock 15 nearing completion