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Pick up plastic on the Montgomery Canal

Bill Bailey gets active to fight plastic

The Canal & River Trust and Strictly Come Dancing winner Bill Bailey are calling on visitors to canals to boost their health and happiness and make a difference in their local communities by joining the fight against plastic pollution.

According to the Canal & River Trust, canals and rivers have been havens for mental and physical health during the pandemic, with more weekly visits to local towpaths since last March in many areas. However, this has been accompanied by a rise in littering, up 68% in 2020, putting the nation’s precious waterway wildlife habitats at risk and causing an unsightly problem.

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Canal & River Trust publishes review of canals and transatlantic slavery

Pierhead in Liverpool

An initial review of academic literature about canals and transatlantic slavery has been published by waterways and wellbeing charity the Canal & River Trust.

Some people who made their wealth through the slave trade invested those profits in canal building, and some canals were built specifically to carry goods derived from the exploitation of slaves tobacco, cotton and sugar for example. The Black Lives Matter movement has spurred on the Canal & River Trust to start exploring these issues and make them more widely known.

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More progress on Montgomery Canal restoration

Digger on the Montgomery Canal for the reinstatement of Schoolhouse Bridge

After four years of preparation, work on the Montgomery Canal restoration took another step forward as the programme to rebuild Schoolhouse Bridge, south of Crickheath, near Oswestry, got under way.

The initial phase of this project involves enclosing land at the bridge site generously provided by adjoining farmers. A trackway will be laid to allow larger vehicles to by-pass the site when the lane is closed with a diversionary route provided for this popular section of the towpath.

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Canal & River Trust awards grants to local charities

Saturn on the Montgomery Canal

We are pleased to see that two charities with close connections to the Montgomery Canal have been awarded grants from the Canal & River Trust.

Thanks to donations from hundreds of people to the Canal & River Trust’s appeal to support small waterway-based charities, the Trust has been able to award £31,500 in grants shared across 43 local charities based on inland waterways in England and Wales. The Heulwen Trust in Welshpool and the Shropshire Union Flyboat Restoration Society, which looks after Saturn, the Shroppie Fly-Boat have both received awards.

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