Cheddleton Waterway Community Day
Sunday 4 March 2007
12 noon - 3.00pm
Event organised by IWA Stoke-on-Trent branch in partnership with the Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust, Stoke-on-Trent Boat Club, the Beatrice Charity - the trip boat for children with a need to get afloat and Cheddleton Flint Mill Industrial Heritage Trust.
A Waterway Community Day will be take place on Sunday 4 March between 12 noon - 3.00pm, in the village of Cheddleton beside the Caldon Canal in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Everybody is invited to come down to the canal for a walk, a fun afternoon out - and see how valuable the canal is to your community.
Local residents and all users of the canal are invited to spend the afternoon enjoying a walk along the Caldon Canal at Cheddleton to see the historic Flint Mill and water wheels, traditional narrow boats and canal art, and the story our canal - past, present and future. There will also be the opportunity to enjoy some Wild Over Waterways (WOW) activities, including a new WOW trail devised especially so that children - and visitors of all ages - can discover more about all the things our waterways are used for.
The afternoon will be centred around the canal as it flows through the Cheddleton Village Conservation Area, and the Flint Mill nestling between the canal and River Churnet. This section of towpath is used daily by local walkers and regularly by long distance ramblers visiting the Churnet Valley. From here routes radiate out to the historic village Church and tea rooms, the nearby Steam heritage railway, a sub aqua diving centre, the renowned Boat, Holly Bush and Black Lion canal-side pubs at Cheddleton, Denford and Consall Forge, the Staffordshire Way and onward to Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, Leek, Rudyard Lake, Froghall and Uttoxeter.
Members of the Inland Waterways Association Stoke on Trent branch, the Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust, Stoke-on-Trent Boat Club and the Beatrice Charity - the trip boat for children with a need to get afloat - will stage displays about waterway-related activities in the Staffordshire Moorlands, nearby Stoke-on-Trent and throughout the waterway network that the Caldon Canal connects into. Other local organisations with an interest in waterways are invited to attend. (Contact : 01538 361138)
Staffordshire Moorlands MP, Charlotte Atkins, will also host a special outdoor "MP Advice Surgery" so constituents can tell her how important the Caldon Canal is as part of their day-to-day life and their business livelihood. This information will support her call upon Government to reverse the recent cuts in funding levels imposed upon British Waterways and the Environment Agency and to ensure secure, long-term funding for inland waterways.
Local waterways organisations are concerned that reduced levels of funding, following on from the recently imposed DEFRA cuts, will decrease maintenance and increase the risk of deterioration of our waterways heritage, structural failure and closures - as happened to the Caldon Canal in the 1960s and 70s.
Everybody is invited to come down to the Caldon Canal at Cheddleton for a walk and a fun afternoon out on Sunday 4 March – enjoy your waterway today, and demonstrate how waterways help keep our community alive!