Dear Members of the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Society,

Welcome to the latest edition of the newsletter.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful and semi relaxed holiday period, for those that worked on the canal and the cottages over the holiday season, a big thank-you. The 2018 Roof Challenge was missed by only one week due to adverse weather, the roofers are coming back in early January to finish the roofing.

Borrowash East subsection

If it seems as if work on the bottom lock has stopped, be assured that it hasn’t, but progress has been somewhat slower for several reasons. For example, the usual crew has been busy in several other more urgent tasks and clearing the cut near Station Road Borrowash is just one of them, take a look. As it happens this is a convenient time to soft pedal with the bottom lock work due to the time of the year, it is usually not ideal for brickwork or cement work when you are under a couple of feet of water…

The picture shows one of the reinstated ‘Derby Canal Path’ signs at Borrowash and Sandiacre that David fitted recently. The signs were repainted DSCT green by Paul Birtles. These can be viewed at Station Road and also Springfield Avenue.

Draycott West Section

Some tidying of this section and most especially replacing the fence and hedge along Derby Road. Removal of decayed fencing is done and fence and hedge repairs are well advanced along with the re-planting of trees and smaller hedge material.

Draycott Canal Cottages

Much work done here with the roof of the main building nearing completion and work on the western extensions in progress such that most of the upper brickwork repairs are done and the reconstruction of those two smaller roofs is well underway.

Sandiacre

Much general tidying done including the removal of some items hazardous items such as dead trees, (especially if leaning), discarded rubbish, various trip hazards and of course the ever present canine deposits. We will also be planting more trees along this stretch to enhance the local area as we go.

Member’s Meeting

The Members meetings for 2019 will now commence for the year on Tuesday the 22nd with Ian Webb presenting a talk on “The hospital ship “Asturias”, meeting starts at 7.30pm at the Willmott Arms in Borrowash.

Our plans for the Derby boat trip are proceeding well and we are looking for crew members to man this brand new attraction to the centre of Derby.

We are looking to launch later this year and are building up a list of people that can help in running the events.

If you are interested, please get in touch.

Social Media

This is not a subject that I use, or understand a lot, I blame the fact that I consider myself to be a techno dinosaur, however we have on board some new help in the form of Daniel to help Jackie, the committee and myself moving forward.

Daniel is an intern with the Derby University and is helping us to update out Facebook and Twitter accounts to draw in even more support and we are even looking at Instagram.

Once we have had a little in depth training on this I will report back.

Wildlife

A call for help please, are you, or do you know a Wildlife expert to help on projects going into the New Year – this is a subject that is of great importance to us all, but as we all know, you cannot be an expert in everything!

Regards,

Eddy – Chair