On our canal - The Drotwich Barge canal is opening

I noticed in the latest waterway news online that the Drotwich Barge canal is to have an official opening soon. The restoration is yet another triumph for the amateur brigade who fought for this canal to be restored when the powers that be were indifferent if not anti and who got on with restoring it, even running a day boat on it when the chap in charge was dieing of cancer and his tearful wife and carer was doing boat duty's as well as fighting to get her husband medical treatment and nursing him 24/7. Meanwhile the Waterway Recovery Group restored locks to a standard much better than the contractors that the government owners  - British Waterways - can ever hope to equal. (Though, of course BW always checks their work as it must be approved with all the right red tape tied.)

 Finally, after years of work by the volunteers  the local councils got interested in restoration, money was found and, when money appears so does BW with eyes a glinting. And so, though WRG has done most of the labour and the local canal society has fought a million battles the canal finally gets OFFICIALLY restored and opened - though one wonders how much of the original efforts will get acknowledged as the toffs of BW and councils line up to get photographed at the opening - before racing back to their offices far away.

Anyway the interesting bit about the barge canal is that it joins to another canal - the Drotwich Junction canal. This is a short canal and as the barge canal links to the river Severn and the Junction one links into another open canal between Worcester and Birmingham the finished pair will give boaters a shortcut missing out a chunk of the Severn, Worcester and a chunk of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

 Now you might think the trip through Worcester would be nice but for us it ain't. Over the next couple of paras I will give our reasons why though others may not agree...

 Basically river moorings are not that great in Worcester and apart from the bit near the Cathedral the passage through is a bit disappointing. The canal bit is even more naff with a few 'you can moor but don't moor - yobs' places and ones where you can moor mostly yob free on a narrow towpath with bikes whizzing past at all hours. The mooring you can use used mostly to be off the cycle trail until BW and their mates started developing Worcester basin. At this point all the residential and other boats in the basin got moved  - some to moor at all non cycle route moorings in the basin and others along the canal near it. As a result what moorings that are left (on the cycle route) are mostly occupied - meaning you either take your chance on a 'moor here but yobs patrol' bit or head out of town.

Heading out of some towns is easy - you just drive the boat along the lock-free canal a few miles. But the Worcester and Birmingham Canal has lots of locks and leaving Worcester means going through a number of them. So off you go through the grotty bum of the town followed by miles of suburbs with the graffiti on bridges telling you to keep going lock on lock. After the suburbs come the factories but mixed in with them are certain camps of  who knows - who stare at you as you pass. By this time you have a noisy road on one side and the M5 in front and above you plus a lot of connector roads - making for quite a bit of noise. Beyond most of this lot is a flight of 6 locks where it seems to rain more often than not. (The slope up and the rainfall on the west side of the high plateau (400' above sea level) where Birmingham sits is 3 times that on the east side - this being the sort of thing you learn when boating.) So you go up the 6 locks, through a cutting and, finally, 16 locks and a good few miles from the river Severn, there are good moorings near a village (shop at far end!) and pub (beside the canal).

And that is why - when it opens - the Drotwich barge canal/junction canal will be very popular with this boater! One small problem - the Barge canal may be opening but it is not yet connected to the junction canal. The link bit has been delayed as in the recession some housing scheme - which incorporated the link lock and channel - has been shelved  This means that until some way is found to get the money and build the link bit the Barge canal is a dead end - and one subject to water problems for, without the connected junction canal to bring water from the W&B canal above there is only limited water from a nearby small river to supply the Barge canal locks.

To underline this problem the Barge canal will have its official opening but only a half dozen boats will then be allowed to travel up and down it before it is padlocked up by its owners - British Waterways.

This grand opening by BW and others followed by padlocks on is not that rare as in recent years it has happened on an number of BW controlled canals - including our one through Maesbury. I'll tell you the story of that and other tales of BW and the Maesbury canal soon...

To end here is a photo of a nice river. This is the pivately owned and maintained river Avon. Now those chaps know how to develop restored waterways and improve them for all!

Note how everyting blends nicely as we leave the lock (under the bridge) and bend round to rejoin the river.

On Roads

Maesbury is full of narrow lanes. Some are more narrow than others. You can see an example of a wide narrow lane in the attached photo. This one has wide verges but don't let them fool you - there are ditches hidden in the grass and the last time a car (passing a truck) went in one they had to get the local farmer to bring his tractor and pull it out.

Luckily this lane is a dead end but others are not and down some some very large lorries go. Of course farmers and other locals can use any lane but such is the size of some lorries that there are prefered routes to get to various firms. As other lanes are mainly used for local cars, bikers, walkers and horses there was a request some years back (in the local Village Design Statement) to make some lanes - including some used as rat-runs by those not using prefered routes - should become quiet lanes. But nothing came of it.

Then, out of the blue Maesbury locals received with their post a questionnaire asking if they wanted certain lanes to have weight restrictions (except for local traffic) on them. 

Now, if you know anything about these sorts of delivered documents you will guess that all but 20% never get filled in, with the majority binned as junk, unread or even not getting read as the occupant doesn't bother. Still the majority of those returned said yes to the weight restrictions.

One might expect that to be the end of the story with signs being put up but - no - this is the land of power groups and local politics and Maesbury - quiet though it is has plenty of both.

 First the groups - we have a couple of lorry firms, we have a number of farmers, and we have, as some say, not got out of the middle ages as far as who controls what goes.

 Now the politics. Maesbury Parish does not have a parish council. It is actually part of a rural parish council with some large villages and other areas and on that council has only 3 votes. So anything Maesbury wants has to be approved by the majority of a group who are mostly outsiders.

 Finally the council that actually own the roads and made the original offer is the County one who have links with a lot of persons and groups and who really control everything. Normally they send our local county councillor to the rural parish meeting to do whatever you wish to imagine she does.

So, we arrive at the rural parish meeting to find the rural council are happy to endorse the plan. But in the public in attendance is a lady who has heard of the plan an objects as she and others she knows have not been offered a vote. Now this lady does not live in Maesbury Parish but in one of those large villages and as far as anyone can see has no reason to drive a large truck along any lane. So, noting her objections the parish council vote for the weight restrictions.

Shortly after we hear - via our county councillor - that the county council have decided to issue questionaires to all in the rural parish - including our lady one assumes. More time and the result of the new poll is in - still in favour of the limits.

 Now around this time locals have found out (as he told us) that the affordable housing man from the council has been round looking for possible sites and thinks a good one is down the lane by the school. Of all the lanes this is definitely the one that needs signs as it is very narrow, on a rat run, and runs right by the school entrance. (The photo was taken near that entrance.)

It may be that this is a red herring in the story but...

The next thing we hear is that the council is unhappy that so few voted so they plan to hold another vote. The low number vote is nothing new to local politics - councillors get elected by very low numbers of people in our area and a previous questionnaire was said to be well responded to when it achieved 20%!

So - a new poll or are they playing for time. One wonders.

Then, yesterday, we hear that 'due to the current climate of recession the council is saving money by cancelling any vote or the plans for weight restrictions in the lanes of Maesbury. This proposal is not dropped however - it will be considered again in the future. Carry on rat running lads! 

On the subject of lanes recently one was closed (according to the county council notice in the paper) for 3 months for repairs to a canal lift bridge.

I lack a photo of said bridge as one has to go through a ford to get to it one way or down a very narrow lane the other where you might meet a lorry and have a very long difficult reverse as there are no passing places.

What concerned me about the closure was those lorries for, according to the office bound council officers, the road over the bridge and through the ford is the only route to a farm. So how would the farmer feed his hundreds of shed-bound cattle? My worry was that the road being shut would mean all traffic wound go over Spiggot's Bridge. (Photo Opposite) 

Spiggott's is a bridge which should have a 4 ton weight limit plus width restrictions but was given a ten ton one by the council. As the bridge is original 1795 stuff it is almost unique and should be protected but our council don't do protection.

A similar bridge in the East midlands collapsed spectacularly under a tractor/trailer load. Like Spoggot's this bridge was bowed on both sides of the road and it is thought that the tractor brushed one wall taking it out. Then as the walls are part of the support for the bridge the wall going weakened the bridge enough for the ten ton trailer to go straight through it - luckily the coupling to the tractor broke. The bridge rebuild cost a quarter million pounds.

With this in mind I e-mailed my concern to our councillor while also making enquires of the navigation authorities (also in an office many miles away) of what was happening. Meanwhile locals reported the bridge was up/down/up/down over the next 3 days. The navigation mob (British Waterways - run by a government appointed group whose chief executive gets more than the PM) gave conflicting reports from their local (Nantwich) office but finally decided the bridge was fixed after 3 days. As for the council - it took them three weeks to inform the local councillor that repairs were completed. This information she passed to me yesterday.        

Welcome

Welcome to the Maesbury Blog.

There are a lot of Maesburys. The one I blog about is in Shropshire near Oswestry.

Maesbury is a very boring place. Some like it like that. Others can't wait to leave it. Others want to live in it as a place that is boring - as in little happens - is the the ideal place for them.

Of course some would like to change Maesbury. The come in a number of flavours -

First there are locals. We have locals who want to make money developing a bit of land - not necessarily anywhere near their house or who plan to leave the area after getting the dosh for a spot of house building. Then we have locals who want a place for a relative and want to build something on their land.

More threatening are the outsiders who see the countryside of Maesbury as ideal building land to build 'housing developments in the country' in. In the past such building has been greatly restricted but more recently the councils have changed and the new mob seem to want to push though affordable housing projects to give homes to the locals cheap. Unfortunately their idea of local operates on a system that seems to take in areas far beyond Maesbury so these folks are not locals at all. More on this anon.

For the moment Maesbury Parish (that's the Church of England Parish an not the council one that adds odd bits) is a dreamy place in the countryside with a bit over 400 houses in a bit over a square mile and that place in the 21st century is what this blog is about.

There is a sister blog to this one which is due to be set up dealing with the history of the area but that has yet to be started. But for the moment I will end with a photo of the area to give you a hint of what Maesbury country looks like.