Restoration feature A little-known set of backwaters off the River Thames have received some millions Restoration Feature: the Maidenhead Waterways Among the sites being planned for possible WRG Canal Camps in the future is the Maidenhead Waterways. And already our WRG BITM regional mobile group has made it one of their weekend working party sites. So what are the Maidenhead Waterways? Where did they go, what state are they in, and what progress has been made on restoring them and what are the plans to open them up to boating? Well the answer to the first of those questions is that they are a set of connected backwaters off the River Thames, which between them once formed a route bypassing a stretch of the main river and passing through the town centre of Maidenhead. As for the state they’re in: well, mostly they’re still intact, they still hold water (some are nominally navigable), and they still fulfill a role as flood channels, carrying surplus water away after heavy rain. But at other times the waterways around the town centre have become almost dry, attracting rubbish and causing them to be seen as an eyesore, while the lengths downstream of the town have been getting more and more overgrown with overhanging trees and vegetation. Or rather, that was the case until around 15 years ago...
The restoration back-story The story began in 2006, with a feeling among the
Pictures by Martin Ludgate
people of Maidenhead that ‘something should be done’ about the state of the channels in the town, which were becoming an eyesore. But their flood relief role meant they couldn’t simply be abolished. So the Maidenhead Waterways Restoration Group (MWRG) was founded, based on a belief that by restoring the water levels to navigable depth and opening up the waterways to boating, they could be turned from a problem into an asset, attracting boaters (who normally cruise straight past as the Thames skirts the edge of the town) to visit Maidenhead. MWRG made a couple of important early decisions. Firstly they decided that breaking the route down into stages would make it more achievable. Although they had visions of eventually reopening a through loop off the Thames, all the way from where the Widbrook stream leaves the Thames near Cliveden to where The Cut rejoins it downstream of Bray, they would tackle the central and southern parts first. They then broke this down further, concentrating on the circuit of urban channels created by the York Stream and the Moor Cut (a parallel flood channel created to relieve the York New basin and development in progress at Chapel Arches Stream) close to the
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