The Shrewsbury & Newport Canals Trust (SNCT) has spent the last year planning the start of the canal restoration from Norbury Junction to Newport, their “Destination Newport” project. This has the active support of the Norbury to Newport CIC, Newport Town Council and the Inland Waterways Asociation
Over the week of 22-29 August 2015 a group from the Waterways Recovery Group (WRG) got the project started with the first restoration of a length of the canal at Forton, just east of Newport, Shropshire. In six days, with the help of heavy plant, nineteen WRGies plus volunteers from the SNCT re-profiled a section of the canal and laid a Bentonite waterproof lining in preparation for the re-watering. The SNCT will continue this work over the winter and the WRG are scheduling further weekend work camps to support this. It is planned to re-water the 100m length, between Forton Skew Bridge and Forton Aqueduct, by summer 2016
The WRG and SNCT volunteers went through a rapid learning curve to find the best way to excavate the correct profile and re-construct the towpath, then how to safely and accurately handle, unroll and cut the 1 tonne rolls of Bentonite and correctly join them. The first couple of lengths took quite a long time to lay and joint but work progressed faster as the team gained experience and we now expect that the rest of the section can be completed quite quickly.
This is the first work done to restore the bed of the canal since it was officially abandoned in 1944. When this section is complete the SNCT plan to move on to work on other sections which can then be gradually joined up to make “Destination Newport” a reality.
