Bridging the Gap on the Chesterfield Canal

Bridging the Gap on the Chesterfield Canal

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Join me in Derbyshire as we follow the beautiful chesterfield canal as the restoration continues in the west, aiming to plug the gap and join the rest of the restored Chesterfield Canal as it winds its way down to the River Trent.

Today we are at Staveley looking at the basin, lock and bridge and follow down through on the Staveley town deal. Under the massive road bridges and away from the old open cast line which now holds the basin. Here several railways crossed the canal which are now abandoned and the planned HS2 depot was to cross. Now the trans pennine trail needs to cross the canal at a new footbridge that takes the cycle way across the canal. We see the spade in the ground for the project as Dr Hardy starts the project which should see a bridge this year. Then the canal follows down onto puddlebanks which we will see very soon on the channel!

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[Music] [Music] I’m on the chest phille Canal this is my very first visit to the canal and an exciting one so this is a place called stavely it’s at the end of the current restoration as you can see right now there’s canal in water and this is a an area which has had a lot of work done in the past sort of decade with a lot more work to come so we come under this bridge and the first thing we see is stavely Basin this is a town Basin and it’s going to be Morin this was constructed in 2011 and is part of a BRI wider regeneration of this area this area was Heavy industry in Railways and if you look at this map now you can see the tracks were everywhere kind of on the other side over there so the CL runs through here and goes to something called The stavely Town which we go into as we go through the video let’s just have a look here look so you’re going to have moing all across there boats coming out uh you got the winding hole there I believe and a and a little slipway to launch you got the lock just over there there’s going to be a building across the back here and further development on sort of the land around here I’m not sure when that du to happen I know there was some articles quite recently about the building going over there it’s a two-story one so I think that’s going to be quite soon it looks very Barren here at the moment but the main thing is this Basin and the Associated where it’s going on down below which will help restore the canal uh back to the current restored section further down so that building will be kind of on my side here now imagine all the narrow boats mored across here now uh boat trips running from here there’s people over there fishing at the moment uh lots of lots of stuff happening over here it’s worth remembering that canals aren’t just about the actual boats they are about the nature they are about getting people out and about into the outdoors I know a lot of can Restorations I know one it’s worth 50 million to the local economy when it’s open it’s a £364 million restoration and that brings 350 million pound per year in health and well-being benefits uh to that area so it doesn’t take long to pay for itself that’s not this canal but it’s just a a clue of what sort of uh happens when the canal gets restored there’s only 9 miles left to this one uh which covers some difficult terrain you’ve got to get through there’s quite a long tunnel that needs to be re redone the old one can’t be used uh there’s a housing estate built further up as well which built on the line despite a lot of objections so they need to get around and drop in and out of a lake there with locks uh which might be part of the river uh R link as well but here’s here’s a uh Town lock and what we’re here to see is everything below here and what’s happening so I believe this lock was done at the same time as the Basin so I put the date is 2011 don’t see any dates on the actual Gates themselves very modern build brick uh I’m not too sure if this is concrete on the top and then you’ve got the bridge as well which is the town Lock Bridge so now we’re going into the the obviously the bottom section now this is an area that’s been held up quite significantly by hs2 now hs2 isn’t coming into Chesterfield but they did plan to have a Works Depot up here so there’s an old line which we’ll get into in a minute and we’re going to use that old line to come in and on the other side I said there were loads of Railways previously they were planning to build a works there so the high so hs2 were across the canal just around his corner so this summer I think the contract runs out for it so hs2 isn’t an issue anymore and they can continue with the works to bring the canal through so the stavely town deal is a25 million deal and that takes the canal another half a mile from where we are behind us there and takes us up to something called the puddle Banks which will come on in a later video this takes us through this area here you’ve got the big new road bridge going across the top and then you’ll start to see work going on now this is an area absolutely crisscrossed with foot paths and Old Railway routes which are now cycle paths and you got the transpan trail which runs across and they need to keep that open so part of this deal is to pay for a new bridge going across and that’s what we’re here to see today so this is the far end this this is where restoration currently stops like I said half a mile is being done further on that takes us almost to an aqueduct and then you’ve got to go through several towns and it’s 9 miles of restoration to get back to the other side of the tunnel so half a mile of that is quite a big section to just knock out straight away now this is the Old Railway used to run up on the other side I said and you can see it with skew see you got the uh little wall across here and then the wall goes further back that way and this is taking us up onto the trail and the top Railway line is going across the canal and that’s where the bridge is going to be so you can see the line of the Old Railway down there which is fenced off like I said that was going to be hs2 and this is the another Railway going across the top which I like I said is a trans paning Trail so you can see the contractor compound over the side there that’s O’Brien who are name contractors for this and right here is where the bridge is going to go so if you look down here there’s been a lot clearance work done you can see the trail goes in a dead straight line up there following the Old Railway track and the canal is going to be in the bottom here so if we go a bit further down you’ll be able to see a bit more so from across there you can see the uh big bridge we walked under that’s a canal coming through in a dead straight line across over there where you can see two cars parked and that is the start of the stavely poal banks and the canal then winds off and goes towards an aqueduct up there and it’s a raised area of canal and this deal takes us through the majority of that until you get to a sharp Bend and then it’s that’s the end of it so it’s not taken us to the aqueduct it’s taken us uh nearly though and then there’s plans in place for the aqueduct already which we’ll be on the next video you can see the truck going up that will lead off the toe path which will be down here somewhere and that lead up to the trail that path’s going to go so you have the bridge across at the top here and then access down to the toe path down here so work was done to clear all of this during the sort of winter months when you’re not going to disturb nesting and although this looks very Barren now it’s a major part of reworld in this area so yeah you lose some trees that’s sad but by the time this is rewatered with a green and blue Corridor all way through more planting down on the sides can all the way through you’re going to create a connected habitat which is going to be far better for biodiversity and and the genetics for all the creatures that live in it who can travel wider breed with different populations then it will be just to have isolated clusters of green area like we have now but let’s see what’s going on so we’re going to meet the contractors now and we’re going to see the start of the ceremony to begin this bridge which will hopefully be completed later in the year from left to right you’ve got Dr Peter Hardy who’s a chair of the CCT you’ve got Toby Perkins MP Trisha Gilbert who is the leader of the chestfield Bar Council Lee roley MP and Tony Mitchell who’s the director of O’Brien’s contractors limited and here we’ve got Dr Hardy putting a ceremonial Spade in the ground for the project yep so basically where we’re standing is the we’re standing on an Old Railway line that went over the canal and the canal would have come through through here and then um a little bit further up just just sort of 100 met that way it went there was a bridge that went over it was an Old Railway another Old Railway there’s a lot of old Railways in this area there’s an Old Railway went over it and basically there’s a bridge there that got demolished in the ’70s uh this ramp was built that brought people down and basically we’re now at the stage where we need to reverse all of that and bring the canal back through so the first thing that the project that we’re sort of kicking off today is the building of the bridge over there um it’s a big 38 M span Steel Bridge that’ll be going in sort of August September time but in the interim um we’re basically going to be able to remove all of this ramp so there’s loads of foot path versions going in at the moment get this ramp out of the way then this gives them room to put the to lay down the bridge and get it all ready for install and then once that bridge is in that gives us room to bring clay we’ve got a big stock pile of clay that a local landowners donated that we’re going to be putting into the big puddle Bank Earth embankment a bit further on that’s all going to come in through this site so get this ramp out of the way gives the room for the clay to go in that’ll all start to come in later on in the year and then once sort of we’ve done all all the moving through here then we can actually come back into this area and build the final Cal in this area so there’s um there’s a lock to go in here and uh that will probably be built some point next year and that Lock’s going to be known as the Keith aing lock so Keith aling was the chairman of the trust from 91 to 2009 something like that I think um so he’s a absolute stor wart of the restoration you know he’s the reason why so much of this stuff happened and uh this Lock’s going to be named in his legacy so we’ve just launched our lock gate fund the Keith alen lockgate fund for that um and I say that’ll get built next year probably going to be tring some Fiber reinforced polymer Gates on that lock which is uh a new technology that’s not really been tried on lock Gates yet so that will be something new um if they work they should last 100 years rather than 20 years for Timber Gates which will be quite nice to quite nice to try so as you can see it’s a very complex project with lots of bits and pieces to do before they can get uh the lock in and stuff like that the puddle Banks is just around the corner which you’ll see on a future video and that’s a very interesting build of a clay Bank going for a field so once that’s got the clay through they can then build the lock and build everything else that goes with it the the bridge should come this year though and I hope to get up before that goes in uh cuz they’re going to prefabricate from three pieces into one big piece in the in the bottom so it’d be good to see that before it goes up as well so please do leave your comments I would love to know what you think about this project it is one I would like to cover a lot more so yeah let me know and have a great day thank you very much [Music]