While doing some of my housekeeping / tidying up, here on the Coffee Shop forum, I found there were various topics, on different boards, all relating specifically to these Cotswold Canals.

I have therefore moved and merged the posts here, in the interests of continuity, clarity - and hopefully increasing reader awareness of the excellent work being done towards their restoration / reopening.

CfN. 

 

Looks like a lovely day and had I not been otherwise engaged, I would have come along.  Yesterday was one of those days with not just a two way but a five way (at least) clash, and I only managed two of the five things ... the outright winner for my attention was the GWR Community and Stakeholder conference in Swindon; the timing was such that I was also able to attend the Melksham Environment Group in the evening.

 
Update: bridge 88 from the water.

Mark

 
The Cotswold Canal Trust are running a very infrequent series of trips from Wallbridge Lock, Stroud, at 10:30am, heading east for a couple of locks before a short trot to Stroud Brewery (opportunity for eats) and return ~3.30pm, £25pp excluding the hit from Stroud Brewery.

The ~three trips later in the year seem to have sold out, tomorrow's (I think the first time they've run this one, so, a shakedown trip) as far as I can see, has spaces.

Mark

https://portal.cotswoldcanals.org/product/perseverance-boat-trip-stroud-brewery/

 
Having been a member of the Cotswolds Canals Trust for most of the current millennium and having an interest in it's restoration since the 1970s,, I'm delighted (to put it mildly) at the work being done there.
Back in November I had one of my occasional visits to have a look at general restoration progress between Stonehouse and Brimscombe and the vegetation clearance was already well progressed at Ocean Bridge.
I feel another visit coming on soon.

BTW...I can only imagine that calling the bridgeside canal pound "The Ocean" was done with tongue firmly in cheek.

 
It's good to see a project that's going well - fingers crossed for successful completion on time.

The posting Ocean Railway Bridge Update #9 https://cotswoldcanals.org/ocean-railway-bridge-update-9/ includes a photograph showing a big crane with a lattice-work jib, and also mentions successfully avoiding wind risk: "Whilst windy, the winds were under the operating threshold of the crane."  I was interested to hear an expansion on this point from a member of the Cotswold Canals Trust at yesterday's meeting of the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology.  He explained that the lattice-work crane was especially chosen to try to avoid delay from strong winds.  Most big cranes have a solid (tubular) jib but this has a lower wind tolerance.  It would have been bad if the line closure had to overrun due to a bit of winter wind, so a scarcer lattice crane was chosen to reduce risk of delay.

 
I remember when it was all fields round there...

I also remember walking along the old railway when there were piles of old sleepers and a bridge with what looked to my small eyes like huge gaps that we jumped over. It scared me, but none of us ever fell through!

 
Regular updates here https://cotswoldcanals.org/category/latest/  (and on Facebook for those that do that sort of thing).
At the current rate of progress it looks as though they'll finish with a respectable amount of time in hand.

 
rail bridge construction work on the Stroudwater canal with some film footage

 
There is now water in the missing mile.

https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/18834726.cotswold-canal-trust-joy-water-enters-new-canal-section/

 

It was actually the Daneway - on the Stroud side of the tunnel. Though I have been to the Tunnel House too. Both pretty good pubs, if I remember correctly.

 

Ah yes, took a look at it....years back.....It looked quite inviting but it was out of opening hours at the time.  The restored canal should have a fair few interesting places to stop off at for a spot of refreshment whether on foot of by boat/barge/ canoe. I would imagine the proprietors would welcome it too.

[fixed quote - RS]

 

https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/18727509.tunnel-house-inn-near-cirencester-announces-closure/ 

 
The Daneway used to be known as a bikers' pub. Can't remember where the scooter boys favoured. That was back in the 1980s, all a bit different now.

 

That would be the Tunnel House Inn at the south tunnel entrance between Coates and Tarlton. My mother lived in Tarlton for a time and it was sort of the village pub.  Except it wasn't in the village or on the Coates road, the quickest way was to walk across the fields on the footpath.

 

The Daneway perchance?

 

I walked a fair chunk of the last couple of miles to Sapperton summit a couple of years back. A good pub there...

 
There are some good pics of the work to be done at https://www.cotswoldcanals.net/photo_index.php?cid=1b

(You can also browse through the site and explore the remaining derelict sections of the canals. There'll be a couple of tricky railway crossings heading east from Stroud, but that's currently allocated to "Phase 3"...)

 

Yes.  The section between Stonehouse and Stroud (phase 1a) was done first as in many ways it was seen as the most difficult....even if it meant the restored section, now just about complete, was not linked to the national network.  Phase 1b, sometimes referred to as Cotswold Canals Connected involves linking Phase 1a with the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal (and hence the national network) at Saul Junction.  The HLF award will complete the work already started on Phase1b.

 

So does that mean we?ll be able to reach Stroud from Gloucester and the rest of the system?

 
The HLF award is for all the other bits between Saul Juction and Ocean.

The ?4m, from Highways England, is for helping to restore the previously obliterated "missing mile" which includes the current work on the A38 Whitminster Roundabout (and the M5 crossing?).
The ?800k+ amount from the HLF about a year ago was to develop the current plan to link up the canal and today's award is to complete the remaining 3-4 miles extra to the missing mile.

 
I can't work out from that report what is new. Work on the roundabout was well under way last year (I believe there's a thread about it) similarly at the Ocean bridge. So what does the new money cover? Or is it a reannouncement?

 
I've been a member of the canal society for pushing towards 20 years and this is certainly the single biggest piece of news since then.  Not to forget of course that shovels are already in the ground at the A38 roundabout which has been a challenging part of closing the gap. I gather the railway bridge obstacle at Ocean is also to be addressed fairly soon.

 
One of the advantages that canal reopenings have over railway reopenings is that volunteer labour can be used.

It''s rather a pity that we cant ask those volunteers to scramble up the bank and rebuild Stonehouse Bristol Road station whilst theyre up there

 
https://www.stroud.gov.uk/news-archive/lottery-bid-success-will-make-stroud-and-stonehouse-canal-towns-after-70-year-break

Edited highlights...:


Enormously good news. This will be the most significant addition to the canal network since the Droitwich Canals reopened in 2011 (there've been a couple of locks opened on the Bow Back Rivers since, but this is more significant, I think).

 
All this helpfully reminds me that it's about time to get the train to Stonehouse or Stroud to do my once or twice yearly stroll to inspect the progress for myself. A lot of dredging in progress last time I was there, up towards Brimscombe which should be pretty much done by now.

 

I think going into the Frome itself was considered too risky by the Environment Agency for reasons of flooding and ecosystem, so the "separate but parallel" solution was arrived at.

The Highways England grant is superb news. The third obstacle, after the A38/A419 and the M5, is of course the Bristol-Gloucester railway: but I believe the intention is to construct a culvert there at the same time as a long-planned engineering closure, coming up in a couple of years.

I'm hoping Phase 1B will be complete before we move our mooring from Worcester - as another long-term CCT member (and the original creator of their map) I can't wait to take our boat to Stroud for the first time.

(A pedant writes: this bit is of course the Stroudwater Navigation rather than the Thames & Severn Canal.)

 
I'm really pleased to read this.   I grew up in (or very near) Stroud and remember as a child walking along or on top of the canal, as most of the route west of the town and round the town had been infilled with rubbish at some previous time. It's so much more pleasant now and all makes sense rather than being isolated stretches. (I also remember walking along the trackbed of the old Midland line there and jumping from sleeper to sleeper on an old bridge – all now turned into a cycle path.)

 
OK, you pointed me in the right direction: The March 2019 edition of The Trow (which you can find here: https://cotswoldcanals.com/the-trow-archive/) explains that the intent is to build a new, lower level channel alongside the River Frome where it passes under the M5.

 
Ah yes, the M5 has had a number of proposed solutions:  Tunnelling under the M5 was one. Another was making a stretch of the river Frome, that runs parallel to the canal route and under an existing M5 bridge, into a navigable deviation. Now, I think, but am just short of certain that the latter solution is favoured but I have to admit that I am a little behind with phase 1b of restoration as I have had my head turned by other shiny new heritage projects or other transport developments of late.

 
Just to be clear, johnneyw: The illustration shows the route where if crosses underneath the A38/A419 roundabout. Is there a usable tunnel under the M5?

 
The £4m is a part of the cost of the next phase of restoration between Stroud and Saul Junction where it will reconnect the Cotswold Canals with the national canal system on the Gloucester - Sharpness Canal.
Sapperton tunnel isn't a part of that restoration stage but will follow at a later stage with different funding.
The £4m is specifically to help where road building has obliterated the original route (A38/M4) in order to link with the short spur of navigable canal at Saul which was reinstated many years ago as moorings.
The 7 odd miles already restored around Stroud was done first as it was seen as the most difficult bit, even if it meant not linking to the national network immediately.
Also soon to come will be the 're-excavation of Brimscombe Port where the two separately run canals that formed the Cotswold Canals met and transferred cargoes as the two canals were of different widths requiring different sized boats.
I'm going on a bit but as a long standing member of the Cotswold Canals Trust, I couldn't resist throwing that in.

 
Following the link from SandTEngineer's post on the Elizabeth Line, I looked up some of the other news items.

One that caught my eye was:
Highways England has today announced £4m funding towards the restoration of the final ‘missing mile’ of the Stroudwater navigation canal in Gloucestershire. http://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/may-2019/highways-england-pours-%C2%A34m-canal-restoration-scheme. The Cotswold Canals Trust says this is part of their larger project "to restore the Cotswold canals as a navigable route from the Severn to the Thames."

I think they will need more than £4m to make the Sapperton Tunnel navigable again https://www.cotswoldcanals.net/sapperton-canal-tunnel.php

 

Strictly speaking in will join the Sharpness Canal at Saul Junction. Jolly good news though.

 

And closer to home, the Cotswold Canals have just got preliminary approval for Lottery money to connect the (newly restored) Stroud section to the main canal network at Sharpness!

 
Yes, it looks like bit of a wait still. Not heard much about NIF in the states lately but I'm not sure if it's function is purely fusion energy production.

 
Given there hasn't yet been a viable (i.e. net energy positive) experimental reactor, commercial ones would be two generations off - so 30 years will be the minimum wait until that experimental demonstration happens. Frankly, there's no real difference between putting 30 or 40 into that "prediction" - it all depends what you mean by.

And ITER is almost 10 years late so far - startup predicted for 2025 (maybe, big maybe) not 2016.)

 
Yes so was Jet at Culham - About 40 years ago!

 
The ITER project in southern France is building a prototype fusion reactor. It,s a multi continental colabouration.

 
I thought Nuclear fusion was always 40 years off has it progressed?

 
We moor at Diglis Basin in Worcester and have done the Severn above Gloucester a few times now. Going downstream, the only tricky bit is the entrance to Gloucester Lock itself, and if you phone ahead then the lockie gets the gates open for you. Upstream it depends on the current - we did it when the level was on orange last year, and absolutely crawled through the Partings (the section from Gloucester Lock to Maisemore); I don't think we managed more than 1.5mph even at full revs. But once we got out onto the main channel things were easier, even with our little 1-litre engine.

Sapperton is (he says glibly) a simple matter of applying money to the problem. The Fuller's Earth which caused the various collapses is a known quantity, and modern tunnelling techniques should prove up to the challenge of keeping it in good order. But it'll require major lottery funding, and there's no point applying for that until the other sections of the two canals are done. In particular, progress on the eastern side (Lechlade-Sapperton) has been much more tentative so far than that in the west.

For the current bid, I believe that HLF could choose to award a lesser grant than that applied for, but given that this would require rescoping the project and (probably) therefore failing to achieve the connection between Phase 1A and the G&S, I'd think it unlikely. As for Walk Bridge, no idea I'm afraid!

 
The reopening of the Sapperton Tunnel is like nuclear fusion. Always thirty years off.

 
Connection to rest of network - yes - initially via Gloucester and Sharpness canal to Gloucester, then the river Severn to Worcester, Hawford or Stourport.  For a suitably powered boat, shouldn't be a problem ... though great care needed upstream of Gloucester and I wouldn't tackle that at times of high river flow or anticipated high flow.

Eventually (but these "eventuallies" do happen in the canal work!) it will also connect via Stroud and Sapperton Tunnel to the Thames at Cricklade; further possibilities include a restored North Wilts Canal to a restored Wilts and Berks ( that work ongoing at present, but some years from completion )

 
That's interesting. Three questions, if I may:
Why is the bridge at on Whitminster Lane called Walk Bridge?
How will connecting the Saul Junction stub to the rest of the canal make a connection to the national network? AFAIK the Sharpness Canal only connects Sharpness to Gloucester and doesn't link to any other canals at either end; is the idea that boats will access it via the Severn upstream of Gloucester?
And is the lottery decision a simple yes/no or can they decide to award a part of the requested ^15 million?

 
And an update on the Heritage Lottery Fund bid to join Stroud to the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal:

http://www.cotswoldcanals.com/pages/posts/heritage-lottery-fund-visit-report-830.php

Really rooting for a successful bid here. The Phase 1A section (Stonehouse and Stroud) will be perfectly pleasant when restored, but it will essentially be an isolated pond with a handful of locks on it. Very few boaters are going to make the effort to get their boats trucked across for six miles of cruising - just those with fibreglass Wilderness trailboats and a handful of canoeists.

But connect it to the national network at Saul Junction, so that the 30,000 boats on the Canal & River Trust network can just cruise straight in, and now you're talking. When the boats come, the canal comes alive, to everyone's benefit.

We had a great wave of canal restoration 15 years ago thanks to the Millennium Commission: the Forth & Clyde and Union canals, the Rochdale, the Huddersfield Narrow, the Ribble Link, the Anderton Lift. Since then we've only really had one major reopening (the Droitwich). The Cotswold Canals are the biggest prize right now - an HLF award would do so much to get them on their way.

 
Good to see some progress.

Meanwhile, just to show you can't do any transport-related project without someone complaining, a few miles further east:
http://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/14286532.Family_blame_canal_restoration_work_as_their_Thrupp_garden_slips_towards_the_water/

 
From the BBC:

 
Indeed. Here's a few more details on the Phase 1b restoration to which the HLF bid relates: http://www.cotswoldcanals.net/phase_1b.php

 
Ok, having checked on google earth, yes, it is. It also looks as if the A419 between the M5 and A38 was built, in part at least, over the course of the old canal.

 
Good news. I'd love to walk or cycle all the way from Saul Junction to ^ well, into Stroud would be great, beyond would be even better!

I think this Westfield bridge is the one beyond (to the west of) the William Morris place at Eastington? Or is it another one?

 
Just for the fun of it, a few historic pics of the Cotswold Canals from a book in my collection:

 

And it could also form part of a future plan to supply London with much-needed water by shifting water from the Severn to the Thames via the canal, saving pipeline and reservoir costs while assisting with another worthwhile canal restoration.

CCT details at www.cotswoldcanals.com (with apologies for the gratuitous plug - I admit to being a member!)

 
From the BBC:

 
From the BBC: