The new towpath is finished!
The new Towpath is finished!
by: Richard A.
Further to my report back in March the towpath between Newtown Bridge and Bond’s Mill is now complete.
Thirty working days spread over four months by anything between 15 and 25 volunteers from the Cotswold Canals Connected Tuesday and Thursday work parties got the job done, led by Jon and Tim.
The first part of the job was to install 233m of new fence and plant about 1400 hedge saplings. Then the route of the path had to be dug out by hand to the new width.
The total length of the path was 285m. 158 edge boards were used and about 150 cross timbers joined them together in a water vole friendly way. To hold it all together 300 noggins and more screws than you can shake a stick at were used. All very labour intensive.
Access to the site was limited and Newtown Bridge has a weight restriction. The 140 tonnes of type 1 crushed stone had to be dumped on the far side of Newtown Bridge. Many, many hundreds of barrow loads had to be pushed up the slope of the bridge, down the other side and then along the part completed path to wherever the path had got to. After that most of 30 Tonnes of topping grit had to be moved the same way. Towards the end some of the grit was delivered to Bond’s Mill which saved pushing barrows up and over the bridge! The volunteers were very thankful for that!
Several photos were taken of different groups on different days so it would not be fair to not show all of the volunteers. The volunteers know who they are and should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
All of the work was done without knowingly upsetting or causing harm to any water voles. Over the thirty days not one volunteer spotted a water vole. Where were they?
This is what the completed path looks like. Better still go and look for yourself!
Looking west
Looking east.
Thanks to Norman and Dave for the interesting statistics.
