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Ashby Canal Festival Calls For Volunteers

Organisers of this year’s Moira Canal Festival are looking for volunteers to help out at the weekend long event

The venue for the festival is Moira Furnace, on a recently restored 1.5 mile section of the Ashby Canal. The festival celebrates its 10th anniversary over the weekend of 22nd and 23rd May.

Volunteers, whose main duties will be helping out on the gate or assisting in setting-up, will be entitled to free admission and a meal voucher. The festival will feature bands, a bar, boats, historic re-enactments, live steam, forest crafts, children’s entertainment, ‘Morris on Moira’, a wide range of refreshments, and more, including the first tightrope walk across the Ashby Canal.

Part of the Ashby Canal was abandoned in 1966 due to mining subsidence, but a Leicestershire County Council-led project aims to restore the 200 year old canal to Moira.

The most recent section of canal to be completed was back in September at Snarestone and works have just started on a further short extension and a slipway.

Eventually the canal will reopen all the way to Moira, reconnecting to the national canal network and providing a green gateway to the National Forest. The first major phase, to Measham will include a road bridge and two aqueducts. One of the aqueducts will have a 60m span to cross Measham High Street.

If you are interested in volunteering please email volunteer co-ordinator Roger Grimsley (roger.grimsley@ntlworld.com) or call Leicestershire County Council’s Ashby Canal Officer on 01530 273956 or email geoff.pursglove@leics.gov.uk.

For more details on the Ashby Canal restoration project, visit: www.leics.gov.uk/ashbycanal