Editorial
Goats?
Is it time for Navvies to go permanently electronic? Or are you all desperate for us to get back to normality and a paper copy you can read on the bog? How does the editor do it? If you look at the first entry in the ‘Contents’ list on Page 3 of the last Navvies, you’ll see it said: “Editorial: Martin’s still being upbeat. How?” That was a slightly terser but more polite version of what I’d originally written, which was more along the lines of “How the hell does he do it?” And it reflected my own genuine surprise at having somehow managed to find so much good news to write about - the canal restoration schemes managing to find new ways of raising cash as a byproduct of other people’s plans to build roads or railways or to shift water around the country; the schemes in mainland Europe making good progress; and the big projects (all of them combining professional and volunteer input) which were gearing up to start soon on the Cromford, Wey & Arun and Montgomery. And I wrote my editorial before we’d even heard the news that the Cotswold Canals had secured final confirmation of the £9m Lottery grant which will enable the Phase 1b section to be restored and reopened, and all the work the volunteers have completed at the west end of the route over the last 10 years to be connected and become part of the national canal network. We’ve got an in-depth feature about it in this issue; we’ve also got several more good news stories of canals finding funding from unexpected places, including one that stands to benefit from its proximity to the Midland Main Line railway; there’s a piece on how IWA grants are helping restoration schemes which are in their earlier stages to provide local benefits right from the start and help their chances for long-term success at the same time; there are progress updates from projects as widely spread as the Manchester Bolton & Bury, the Stafford Branch, and the Hereford & Gloucester; and there’s a piece on WRG taking steps towards finally looking to get back to work in the New Year. Oh, and that front cover pic looking down the tunnel isn’t just a figurative picture of light at the end of the tunnel - it’s an actual photo taken inside the east end of Norwood Tunnel on the Chesterfield Canal, the section that hasn’t been completely trashed by coal mining, and will hopefully get restored, reopened, and connected to a new route over the top of the hill in the next few years - see our Chesterfield Canal restoration feature for more details. And there’s cake. As you can see from the cover pages we’ve hit our target of 50 birthday cakes to mark WRG’s 50th anniversary this year. Truly there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and yes, the editor still has stuff to remain upbeat about. But that’s “How the hell does he do it?” What about “Why the hell does he do it?” And on that subject...
Canals for goats? OK, you thought it was a misprint. Or you thought you’d misread it. And yes, I really did once spend a whole evening with a bunch of WRGies at a canal festival, laughing at all the wacky things you could come up with simply by replacing the word ‘boat’ with ‘goat’ in wellknown waterways expressions (such as the Goat Handling Competition, the National Association of Goat Owners and the Goat Safety Scheme) - you won’t be surprised to hear that some beer had been taken... But no, I really do mean ‘goats’... An online railways forum that I used to follow had an expression ‘goat herders’: this stemmed from the eternal arguments between those who were happy to embrace all manner of new technology on the railways (for example new ways of paying fares such as etickets and m-tickets) and felt that there was no reason for the train operators to go out of their way to cater for the minority who couldn’t or wouldn’t use such things; and on the other hand those who disagreed and felt it was the duty of the transport operators to con-
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