Audlem Towpath Task-force's work

I am one of the canal volunteers at Audlem and last year took on the role as the Volunteer Leader for the volunteers working for Canal & River Trust at Audlem.

The main objective was of heading up the "Towpath Task-force" which is a group of like-minded volunteers making a positive difference to the stewardship and environment of the canal.

I took this on with the personal objective of returning the canal in Audlem to the condition previously enjoyed.

At the end of last year the Task-Force started off with jobs such as tidying the canal in the village and over the winter months planting literally thousands of bulbs and clearing mud from the towpath surface.

We began the year with the constant battle of clearing surface mud from the towpath and as the weather improved, set about the task of painting all the locks and canal infrastructure on the whole flight of 15 locks.

Wednesday Evenings

As progress was slow due to weather and traffic disruption when we met on the monthly Task-Force Saturday, the midweek evening Task-Force was born. Since the end of May the volunteers met on no less than 11 Wednesday's to undertake the painting project.

Last week we completed the last for this season mid-week evening Towpath Task force at Audlem and I would like to share the outputs and successes of the team's achievement and give a final (progress) report on the works completed.

The mid-week evening task force has been hugely successful in many dimensions and outputs, recruiting three new regular, exemplary, volunteers to work for C&RT at Audlem, completing the painting project, volunteers building and gaining both confidence and skills, customer engagement in the way of volunteers seen working outside the normal "office" type hours and the many discussions taken place with members of the public, boaters etc and even friendships developed amongst those volunteers attending.

Achieved

To summarise the output(s) of the midweek task force:

• 10 Wednesday evenings and one midweek day worked with Network Rail volunteers.
• 47 Volunteer attended days
• 203 Hours worked
• 15 Locks painted, 45 Lock gates painted
• 165 bollard pins painted
• 2 Mile-posts painted
• 2 Access point gates painted
• 2 Access styles and fences painted
• 2 Footpath sign posts painted
• 9 Safety fences painted, the equivalent of 250m of 3-pail fence
• 4 Bridge rope guards painted
• Lock 13 (Ticket-House) lock cottage fence painted
• Bin compound gates painted
• Service station handrails painted
• 2 signs painted
• Filled in pot-holes on the access road to the Mill/Shroppie Fly
• 5 Canal side benches painted.

The general consensus amongst the volunteers is that the Wednesday evening Task-Force has been not only successful as mentioned above but also enjoyable, will be missed over the winter months and next season is looked forward to whereby we plan to further enhance the canal environment in Audlem.

I would appreciate your feedback and thoughts and hope the summer works meets the village's expectations.

Dek Owen
Volunteer (Task Leader)
Canal & River Trust

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.