Restoration Round-up
by Colin Greenall

Part 1: Work Party Report

There has not been much volunteer activity over the last three months, the only work party to take place being way back in May when on a glorious sunny day we began work on painting the lock gate and surrounding equipment at Spike Island in Widnes.

Sunday 11th May 2008. Spike Island, Widnes:  Painting the Lock gates

I arrived at Spike Island about 9-45am, no sign of Steve (Ranger) but Bob was there and Peter arrived soon after me. Spot on 10-00 am Steve arrived and opened up the visitor centre and put the kettle on by this time Ian had appeared.  After the tea we loaded the paint etc into Steve's van, which he took the short distance to the lock, the rest of us walked

The first task was to open the top gates of the lock, these are the ones that we are going to paint, this required a key to unlock the padlock and bar, which held the two gates together.      

Out came the wire brushes and we set to work on removing all the loose and flaky paint from the balance beams the winding gear and the bollards, then it was on with the paint.

We made good progress, the weather was hot and the paint spread and dried in fine style. Now we had been joined by Chris, Dave and John along with a group of youngsters intent on bathing in the lock, despite the warnings given out by Steve.

Dinnertime came and Ian went home Bob, Peter, Steve and myself went over to the visitor centre to eat our sandwiches, Steve made more tea, the others carried on painting.

On our return to the lock the group of bathers had doubled and a large crowd of onlookers had gathered, this made it difficult to paint things away from the top gates so we concentrated our efforts on finishing that end of the site.  By mid afternoon we had run out of white paint and we still had the rails and wire mesh of the offside gate to do so we called it a day and made a date to come back later in the year to complete the project along with the rest of the bollards.

Many thanks to all the volunteers for turning out on such a lovely day.

Part 2: Restoration News in the Three Boroughs

The opening of the new bridge at Bewsey Lock

On Wednesday 18th June I attended the opening ceremony of the new bridge, which now spans Bewsey lock.

At 2-00 pm a small group of local councillors, members of Warrington Council and myself representing SCARS, assembled at Bewsey lock to commemorate the restoration of Bewsey lock Swing Bridge.

After the previous good weather of the preceding days today turned out to be wet, in fact soon after we had assembled down came the rain.

Alan Dickin from the Environment Regeneration Department of Warrington Council started the proceedings with some information about the bridge and its state of disrepair prior to restoration. In his address he thanked WREN for the grant and said that without this substantial contribution the replacement bridge would have been something less than appropriate to the old one.

Councillor Alan Litton in his reply thanked Warrington Council for its efforts in obtaining the grant and for the enhancing of this wonderful amenity that is Sankey Valley Park.

Then followed the cutting of the ribbon by one of the councillors and a photograph shoot for the Warrington Guardian and then more rain.

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