Email: Doesn't agree

As a member of the Waterway Recovery Group with some recent experience of working on the Monty, I would just like to point out a couple of factual errors in the piece 'WRG ruining Montgomery Restoration'.

First of all, recent work has concentrated on the section of canal between Prices Bridge (the limit of the current SUCS site) and Crickheath Wharf, clearing vegetation from the canal bed and allowing access to survey the canal for future work.

The four weeks of canal camps this summer will be on this section, and will be somewhat experimental in nature, in an attempt to find the most suitable, and cost effective, way to restore this next section of canal, which has been particularly prone to leakage, and has suffered from some ground movement (hence the undulating nature of the towpath, which dips below what would be water level in several places). This work will pave the way for tackling the remainder of this, and other similar sections between here and Llanymynech.

We have also spent time over the last 2½ years restoring the other Crickheath Wharf, a former tramway/canal transshipment wharf. In 2009 the annual reunion weekend was held on the Monty, and we undertook clearance work on the half mile stretch heading South from the wharf, again in preparation for surveying work (presumably what David Hancock refers to), which was prior to the decision to concentrate on the section immediately North of Crickheath.

Mike Chase