All down to the weather?

Do you remember my post about the state of the towpaths?

Well I felt that as it hasn't improved over the past two weeks or so, I would drop British Waterways a line. I received this reply:

"VEGETATION MANAGEMENT ON THE OXFORD CANAL



Thank you for taking time to inform British Waterways of the overgrown vegetation at Spiceball Park and north of here. We are aware of the situation on the towpath with overgrown vegetation(exacerbated by the warm and wet conditions) and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you or family.

We are working closely with our new contractor Fountains to clear the vegetation as quickly as possible and are asking people to bear with us during this period. Additional staff have been allocated to deal with the backlog of work and British Waterways and Fountains are confident that once this has been dealt with the overall standard of vegetation management will exceed that of the previous contract.



Despite the extra staff resource we anticipate it will be at least 3 – 4 weeks before we see significant improvements between Banbury and Cropredy. We have put together a detailed recovery plan to manage the backlog and clear the towpaths of vegetation. Fountains have provided additional teams to focus on strimming the towpaths to get the grass down to a level where the core team can then establish the defined standard as detailed in the contract and another team to target mooring sites, locksides and selected destinations. If you would like to know when specific areas of towpath are to be cut back I would be happy to have Lee King, British Waterways Contracts Manager talk directly with you.

Once again thank you for bringing this to our attention and please accept our sincere apologies.



If you have any questions or require further information please give me a call on 01908 302552."

Maybe, some of you who cannot see the towpath from the canal or the canal from the towpath might like to give this number a call!