Helping Out at Burslem Port

If you enjoy reading my blog, you'll know that we bears love travelling along canals.  However, not far from our human guardians' house there is a lost canal - the Burslem Branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal, which used to run into the outskirts of the Potteries' "Mother Town" of Burslem.

A group called the Burslem Port Trust were set up over twenty years ago to try and reopen the canal, with plans for moorings near the terminus and smart housing developments alongside the waterway.  A lot of other towns and cities did build nice things beside their canals at this time, but Stoke-on-Trent never did,

Despite this, the Burslem Port Trust's volunteers have carried on campaigning and looking after the site, making sure that things didn't get built over the line of the canal and keeping it as clear as possible of thick weed growth.

Last Friday, Polar and Grizzly went to help, taking their wheelbarrow and some tools, and I went along too.  In the autumn of last year, with the help of the Waterway Recovery Group, a new path was laid alongside the route of the lost canal and, since then, the volunteers have been tidying up around it, clearing old bricks and rubble into piles so people don't trip over them.

They have also started building some "dead hedges" out of trimmed branches, where lots of insects and small mammals can make their homes.  It's a great way to do landscaping, as it saves the pollution and fire-risk of burning scrub that has been cut back, and can be used to mark out paths and make other features, like the maze at Westport Lake.

Before she started helping with the work, Polar took me to see more of the site.  We walked down to the old warehouse, which the Trust hope will one day be a nice community centre with a café, or a little museum, or maybe some craft workshops next to the marina.

There is a little bridge nearby which used to go over the canal, but you can see how it has all been filled in.  It will be a very hard job to move all the spoil so this may end up being the terminus when the Burslem Branch Canal is restored.

After exploring the little bridge, it was time to make our way along the new path to where Grizzly and the other volunteers - Mr David and Mr Alan - were hard at work.  They were using some of the rubbly bits to fill in along the sides of the path, then packing soil around that to make the edges all neat and safe.

The new path doesn't yet go all the way to the canal, although there is a rough path that carries on that way, so I asked Polar if we could go and look at it and she agreed.

It was not too far, at least for a small bear being carried in the Bear Bag.  The canal was quiet and still, with no boats on the move, so we sat for a few moments imaging what it would look like of there was a canal junction here.

Facing the canal, there is now a marvellous mural of what Burslem Port and the area around it was like when it was busy with boats carrying coal, clay and china.  One day, we hope there will be some more information boards along the route to help people understand what it used to look like and where interesting things used to be.

We could also see from the mural how the pottery at Middleport looked when it had many more bottle kilns.

"I need to help with the path work now, Sonning," Polar said, after we had been looking at the mural for several minutes.  "I'll carry you back with me now.  You'll be safest if you stay in the Bear Bag while all the digging is happening."

On the way back, we had a good view of the valley that the canal runs above.  Some people assume this was the canal, but the canal was on the left side of the path as you head away from the main line of the canal, while the valley is on the right.

Polar and Grizzly and their friends worked hard for a couple of hours, breaking up the piles of spoil and packing along the path edges and, by the time they stopped, quite a lot was done.   

Polar saved this nice little piece of floor tile that she found, so we could take it home to show the other bears.  I wondered what sort of building it had come from, what that had looked like and who had lived there or worked there.

"Will we come again?" I asked, as Polar wheeled me and the tools back towards the car.

"We plan to," she said.  "There should be fortnightly work parties now we are in the spring, as we'll need to make sure the brambles don't take over.  Grizzly and I won't get to all of them, but we'll come along as often as we can, and you bears can join us, if you're careful not to get lost." 

Yesterday, there was a special event organised by the Burslem Port Trust to share their current plans with other community groups in the area and they invited local people in to see them and say what they thought.  Polar and I went to help, while Grizzly was with the mechanic doing Uppie's annual service.  Hanley Bear wouldn't go, however, because it was being hosted by Port Vale Football Club!

The Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, Mr Dudson, came to see everyone and made a nice speech too, and so did Mrs Joan Walley, who used to be the area's MP.  I was very impressed when I learned that Mr Dudson had walked along the entire towpath of every canal in Staffordshire!

I made some new friends from the Middleport Matters community group, who would like me to visit their "hub" one day, to show grown-ups and human cubs how to make bear clothes out of old human clothes and jumpers for small stuffies from socks.  I asked Polar is she thought Endon Bear would let them have some of his spare special tomato plants for their Root and Fruit allotment, and she said she was sure he wouldn't mind. 

Polar was given a Burslem Port bag by the Trust and some eco-friendly, plastic-saving things for doing the laundry and keeping the house clean, by the Middleport Matters people. When Grizzly arrived later by bus, he had a cup of tea with us all, then we gave Tracy and Jen from Middleport Matters a lift back to their hub on our way home.

The other bears were all interested to hear about the plans and hoped we might get to Burslem Port on Uppie one day.  Endon said he would love Root and Fruit to have some tomatoes, but Hanley was horrified when I told him I had entered a free raffle to win a signed Port Vale shirt.  I'm sure I will get a very, very hard stare if I win it!