Navvies 326

years. It was never going to be a quick restoration because Sign the petition! it’s a tricky one – several towns including Swindon and Abingdon having expanded to obliterate parts of its route since it closed in 1914 – but away from these towns there are many miles of surviving waterway and some significant progress has been made. Now, however, it’s under threat from something which could (and until recently looked like it would) actually provide a major benefit to the restoration.

That ‘Something’ is the new Thames Water reservoir known as the South East Strategic Reservoir Option (SESRO) which is planned for the area south west of Abingdon.

Scan the code to support This is planned to occupy part of the route of the old the Wilts & Berks Canal canal, so it could be seen as a problem for restoration.

However, new reservoirs are required to have emergency draw-down channels in case they ever need to be emptied in a hurry. And in this case, one option for the draw-down channel is to build it as an open channel from the reservoir to the Thames at Abingdon, large enough that it would form the new easternmost few miles of the restored canal, entering the Thames via the short channel that we built as a volunteer project back in 2006.

This would provide several miles of navigable canal, getting around the problem section that’s disappeared under Abingdon, giving the canal one of its links to the rest of the waterways network, and making the sort of progress towards eventual completion that might otherwise take many years – as well as providing all the other benefits canals provide for nature, walkers and other local users.

A win all round. Except that Thames Water has now decided that its preferred option is to instead use a big underground pipe, with no canal restoration benefits. And the reservoir would still block the canal’s original route, making restoration harder.

So what can we do? Well, if you get this in time, you might just be able to reply to the consultation on the reservoir by the 28 August deadline – go to https://thames-wrmp.co.uk/ sesro, scroll down to the ‘Public consultation’ bit, follow the link to ‘complete questionnaire’ , and answer each question (you can do a ‘no comment’ answer if you like). When you get to the one that begins “We have considered several options for the emergency discharge and Option C is SESRO’s preferred option.” reply to this in your own words, putting across the points above (assuming you agree with them!) or any others you think are important.

And one other thing you can do is sign the online petition – the QR code on this page will take you there (and note that you don’t have to make a donation).

But coming back to this issue of Navvies, there’s something a bit unusual this time, and that’s a blow-by-blow account of taking a pair of historic wooden working narrow boats down the Ashton Canal and the ‘Rochdale Nine’ locks through central Manchester. No, it’s not a canal restoration article. It’s not even a boat restoration article. But I’ve included it anyway because the group concerned, the Wooden Canal Boat Society, are a splendid bunch who spend their time maintaining these historic and in some cases unique boats (and wooden ones take far more work than modern steel hulls), and who could do with more volunteers to help with both the restoration work and making sure that the boats see some actual use. And also because it ties together a couple of other things. In the last issue we covered the 50th anniversary of the reopening of the canals they travelled - the Ashton Canal and the Rochdale Nine (OK the Nine actually opened two years later after many delays). A few years before that, these routes were derelict, impassible and under threat of official abandonment, and people were calling for them to be filled in as a health and safety hazard. To many they didn’t look to have much future – like the Wilts & Berks might have seemed at times in more recent decades. The restoration movement saved the Ashton and the Rochdale Nine back then; let’s do our best for the Wilts & Berks now.

And finally, this issue sees the return of the ‘Infill’ inside back page oddities feature.

This time we’ve got a splendid demonstration of how not to fill in H&S paperwork, and some interesting comments from WRGies on issues of Navvies from days gone by (and there will be more next time). And I hope to bring back our very own agony aunt Deirdre.

You have been warned…

See you on a working party somewhere!

Martin Ludgate, Navvies Editor Page 5