Caldon Canal Clean-up!
Wales & Border Counties Waterways, Towpath Tidy 2009
19th, 20th, 21st & 22nd March, Stoke on Trent
Volunteers from the Trust, along with others from Stoke-on-Trent Boat Club and IWA Stoke-on-Trent, recently met with Steve Bicknell, Customer Operations Supervisor for British Waterways Wales and Border Counties, to discuss the forthcoming clean-up ‘long weekend’.
As regular users of the canals through Stoke, we highlighted areas of particular concern and our keenness to “get stuck in” and to remove rubbish from the canal itself. Steve has taken this ‘on-board’ and plans are in hand for skips, grappling hooks and a least one boat to help facilitate this.
YOUR CANAL NEEDS YOU!
Come
along any day 19th – 22nd March and help clean up the Caldon –
and meet other friends of the canal too! As details for each day are confirmed
they will appear on this website.
To register your interest in joining in the clean up – on any one
or even all of the days – please send an e-mail to cleanup@cuct.org.uk
or call 01538 361138. We hope to coordinate a particular session where
a number of volunteers from the Trust turn out and help make a difference
to our canal.
Steve Bicknell explains:
This year’s Towpath Tidy is planned to be focused primarily in two areas, Stoke-on-Trent Etruria Basin – outside the Industrial Museum - to Bridge 16 on the Caldon Canal and Bridge 108 to Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent & Mersey Canal through Stoke.
The aims of British waterways Wales & Border Counties Towpath
Tidy 09 are:
• To improve sections of waterway (not just another litter pick)
before the summer season begins.
• Increase volunteer numbers available to the business unit.
• To give an opportunity for BW office based staff to engage and
increase contact with volunteers and customers.
• Promote the activities of BW and demonstrate the value of the
waterways in these areas.
• Create a database of volunteers for future events, such as National
Volunteers Week: 1st-7th June 2009.
• Promote volunteer opportunities in the future, with further planned
events.
• Possible recruitment of Volunteer Rangers / Wardens.
Although an actual task list is still in its early days for the event, I do not intend Towpath Tidy 2009 be purely a litter picking experience for all involved. I have already produced a list of outstanding notifications for the sites and I have carried out a “walk through” of the sites and highlighted further tasks, such as…
• Graffiti removal.
• Vegetation control.
• Painting of timber, metalwork, lock gates etc.
• Towpath works.
• Dredging of certain sites to remove waterborne debris.
• Bulb planting.
• Habitat creation, bird boxes, insect nests, meadow areas etc.
• Hedge laying.
In the next few days I will be meeting with Supervisors that cover these locations and give them opportunities to suggest other tasks for the event.
Steve Bicknell, Customer Operations Supervisor, Wales & Border Counties Waterways, Tel: 07736 330288