The SPOKES Committee has been working hard over the last few years to highlight the deterioration of the Kennet and Avon Towpath throughout West Berkshire, much of which forms part of National Cycle Network Route 4.

Constructed in the late 1990s by Sustrans, NCN4 was originally built as a 2m wide crushed aggregate surface with grass verges either side. Unfortunately, the path has received very little maintenance since. In many places the grass has encroached narrowing the path considerably, while in others the top surface has worn away exposing larger stones beneath and making it uncomfortable to ride on. Also, the banks of the canal have been subject to erosion over the years, with boat mooting pegs tearing holes out of the bank in various places, and dogs widening the holes as they enter and leave the water, creating a hazard for unwary cyclists.

The Canal and River Trust (C&RT) is the charity with responsibility for the upkeep of the towpath. They are making use of developer contributions from the Newbury Racecourse development to fund improvements on the section of towpath between the A339 flyover at Victoria Park and Hambridge Road in Newbury. They will widen this 1.7km stretch of towpath to around 1.8m and will apply a tar spray and chip material to create a sealed, all-weather surface. They are also constructing 20m of sheet piling back-filled with canal dredgings and planting, and 8m of bank protection with timber stakes and coir rolls where the banks have been eroded.

However, a lack of funding means that C&RT are unable to carry out all of the outstanding maintenance tasks on their network. SPOKES has therefore sought to raise funds to tackle some of the worst affected locations, starting with the section between Colthrop and Brimpton Road. Here, the grass has encroached to the extent that the path is now less than a foot wide in places with a high lip on either side, which makes it almost impassable for cyclists.

Providing a 2m bound surface for this 1km section has been estimated to cost around £219,000 using C&RT’s term contractor. We had some early success, managing to secure up to £50k of match funding from Greenham Common Trust, plus some small grants from Thatcham Town Council and Englefield Charitable Trust. We submitted other bids to the Veolia Environmental Trust and British Cycling, but these were unsuccessful. However, West Berkshire Council has agreed to contribute £42,000 and SPOKES is putting in £10,000, which is the majority of our reserves. When matched against the Greenham Common Trust funds, we have close to half of our original total.

However, we believe that this will be sufficient to construct a crushed aggregate path to a width of 1.6m, which is actually C&RT’s preferred specification and would be similar to the original Sustrans construction. C&RT has indicated that they may be willing for us to use suppliers other than their term contractor to undertake the work. This means we would be able to go out to the market and take advantage of cheaper rates to stretch our money still further. We aim to go out to tender shortly and if all goes according to plan, we hope to start work later this year.

We hope once we have demonstrated the impacts of these improvements, that this will create some momentum to tackle the remaining stretches of NCN4 in West Berkshire, which Sustrans ranked amongst the top-10 priorities for the network across the South of England.