Meeting Clive

I had a few meetings this morning in town, the first of which was with Clive, the manager of the Cotswold Canals Trust Visitor Centre, which you can see here on the right just behind the old bridge over the canal. The Canals Trust are very involved all along the canals of Gloucestershire and do very good work.

This is Wallbridge, an old part of Stroud, and that bridge is the very old original route into the town centre from the south. We were standing on the newly replaced Brewery Bridge, where the A46 now crosses on its route north. A small part of the canal has been filled with a token gesture of water, but this section of the regeneration of the Stroudwater Canal won't be finished for another couple of years.

You might just be able to see the old lock gates, just behind the arched bridge, which are about to be replaced with brand new ones, possibly being installed by November of this year.

Clive and I had been discussing how each of our groups can help in progressing the many complex issues. It was good to hear his views. The visitor centre has been very busy, reflecting the interest in the re-opening of the canal so many decades after it was abandoned. The Town Council has already had discussions about taking over the management of the small bit of land beside the canal which you can see just behind Clive.

We both agreed that it was such a pity that more care hadn't been spent on the wall of the canal, where the old iron-barred windows in the original stone wall have been left rather derelict. They were part of the canal-side facilities of the original Stroud Brewery, which was sited between there and the red-brick modern replacement building, which has no feeling for the style of a traditional Cotswold stone town.

I asked Clive if I could take his picture, which he agreed to. I was in a rush, and as he had a few more things to tell me, I asked him to keep talking while I took this picture, as a record of the site and our meeting.