Works to make a popular stretch of canal towpath more accessible and user-friendly for the local community are set to begin shortly.
The works being carried out by the Canal & River Trust, the charity responsible for the nation’s waterways, will see the Caldon Canal towpath around Cheddleton resurfaced providing walkers, cyclists and disabled visitors with a clean, green traffic-free route. The ‘Connecting the Heritage’ project, will link two of the area’s most important and popular historic attractions, Churnet Valley Railway Station and Cheddleton Flint Mill, making it easier for wheelchair users and people with pushchairs to visit. The project will also see two wheelchair-friendly boat access points created at the Flint Mill, specially designed in conjunction with The Beatrice Charity.
The works, which will see around 1.2km of towpath between the Flint Mill and Basford Lane Bridge improved, are due to start on 18th February and are expected to last for approximately 8 weeks. As part of the works new visitor moorings will be created to enable boaters to stop and use the shops and other facilities providing a welcome boost to the local economy.
The £200,000 project is being part funded by the Churnet Valley Living Landscape Partnership (CVLLP) with additional funding being provided by the Communities Mean Business LEADER programme (part of the Rural Development Programme for England), the Canal & River Trust and the Garfield Weston Foundation. The project has also benefitted from significant involvement of volunteers from the Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust.
The towpath works have been designed following consultation with Cheddleton Parish Council, local residents, business operators as well as walkers, cyclists and boaters that use the canal. A common theme from the consultation was a desire for the canal towpath to be improved and made more accessible for a range of users.
The towpath improvements form part of a wider project being delivered by the CVLLP which is aimed at protecting, enhancing and celebrating the special landscapes of the Churnet Valley in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The Partnership has been awarded a grant of £1.89m from HLF and aims to deliver a range of schemes designed to enable local communities to rediscover their local heritage and to provide a boost to the social economy with initiatives such as training schemes for young people.
Chris Bailey from the Canal & River Trust said; “It’s really exciting to kick off the Churnet Valley Living Landscape Partnership with a project that we know will really benefit the local community. As a partnership we’re delighted to have worked with the Parish Council and local residents to develop a project that will make the canal towpath more suitable for wheelchairs, bikes and pushchairs, giving local people a more enjoyable place to visit. Once complete the new towpath will make it much easier for people to enjoy the canal and see the beautiful Churnet Valley from a different perspective”.
Julie Arnold from the Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust (C&UCT) said "The volunteers of the C&UCT have been working on a campaign towards towpath improvements for a number of years: interviewing towpath users, participating in village consultations and undertaking vegetation clearance plus surveying the route with Canal & River Trust engineers. They are delighted that this has led to these partnership projects that will deliver improvements for everybody that uses the Caldon Canal through the Churnet Valley."
The towpath will be closed while works take place but an alternative route will be available on the opposite side of the canal using a footpath recently improved by the community with the support of the Parish Council and funding from the ‘Community Means Business’ LEADER programme, part of the Rural Development Programme for England. This should result in only limited disruption to the many local users of the towpath and visitors walking the Staffordshire Way.