Volunteers needed for canal's 'missing mile'

More volunteers are needed to help reconnect a historic canal to the UK's national waterways network.

The Cotswold Canals Trust was awarded £6.4m by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in November to restore the "missing mile" of the Stroudwater Navigation to the national network.

The missing mile was originally filled in during the 1960s to allow for the M5 motorway to be built.

The trust's volunteer depot manager, Will Foster, said: "There's an A to Z of volunteering roles from archivist to zoologist and we use all of them."

Mr Foster said while they specifically need volunteers with construction and supervisory experience, "there's always a turnover" so they are "always looking for new people to join".

"You'd be surprised how much needs to be done that doesn't happen unless somebody comes along and does it," he added.

The volunteer-run charity has about 450 volunteers and has restored huge stretches of the 18th Century Stroudwater Canal, which closed in 1941.

The missing mile project, led by Stroud District Council, has a paid team of staff including engineers and planners, but without volunteers on the ground, the charity said the restoration would not happen.

Former social worker Bridget Mitchell has been volunteering for the trust for 15 years and said there is "something for everybody".

"People can bring their skills but you don't have to be skilled to do it," she said.

"You just do what you can. I do quite a lot of barrowing, shovelling.

"People can learn skills like brick laying and repairing a bridge," she added.

Volunteering for the last four years since taking retirement as a mechanical engineer, Rick Lees said working on the project is home from home, especially as he used to play in the disused canal with his friends as a child.

"My memory of the canal in the past is of an overgrown weedy ditch with no water in it," he said.

"But now you can see there's water in it and boats can access certain parts and the locks are slowly evolving back out of the ground again. It's just a great thing to see happen and I hope I can see it finished."

The trust is hoping to start work on the missing mile later in 2026 and to reconnect it to the national canal network at Saul Junction on the 250th anniversary of the Stroudwater navigation in 2029.

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