A quintessentially rural canal, the 33 mile long Grantham traverses three shire counties

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May 17th 2006

Marriott Hotels Community Day - Report by Martin Day

On Wednesday 17th May 2006 the international hotel group Marriott Hotels, who have one of their hotels beside the Grantham Canal on the east side of the A1, had a community day. All their hotels worldwide do the same and the one at Grantham chose the canal on which to focus their efforts for the good of the community and the environment. Peter Stone, the secretary of the Grantham Canal Partnership and a member of the restoration section of the society arranged a link up with ourselves to help where we could. Tony Pitman, Chris Tizzard and myself travelled to the hotel and Tony and Chris set up a display of our society activities. I took a grappling hook and rope and lent a hand pulling out shopping trolleys etc. I only lent advice because it was their day not a combined operation so we didn’t want to spoil their task. The head Chef, no less, came to see us with a colleague carrying cold drinks, which was very welcome. After I had seen that they were doing all right I left them to it and walked past a large pile of trolleys, pushchairs and a rather nice executive desk chair to get to my car. The canal is not under British Waterways control but rather South Kesteven Council who loaned equipment and collected all the waste at the end of the day. We have done some work on this section but as its existence was under question for some time we haven’t done a full restoration so that means that there are fallen trees not only on the far side but also between the towpath and the water that will all have to be removed or bow hauling of boats will not be possible. The council had performed a lot of cutting back shortly before but now it needed tidying up and clearing.

I, for one, would like to thank Marriott Hotels for thinking about the canal as a project for their special day. We hope that other companies will see the need to contribute something to the canal and eventually reap the rewards that it will bring when it reopens. Just look at the centre of Birmingham no businesses would be seen dead near it or even mention it but now it is the ‘place to be’ and fetching huge prices for canal side places for restaurants etc.

Looking forward to the next project.

Martin Day.

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