Civil engineering for leisure: restoring the Wilts and Berks Canal Available to Purchase

The dedicated and resourceful volunteers who are rebuilding the abandoned 200-year-old, 85 km long Wilts and Berks Canal between Bath and Oxford in southern England are probably gaining more hands-on civil engineering experience than many civil engineers. Using a variety of funding sources—including the Heritage Lottery Commission, landfill tax credits, section 106 agreements and construction industry sponsorship—they are gradually working their way through a technically challenging, £103 million restoration project that they hope to complete within ‘a generation’. This paper shows that such projects can be wonderful advertisements for civil engineering as well as providing real rewards for both engineers and non-engineers alike.