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Canal Festival fun
A whole weekend of family entertainment is lined up for the 2018 Chesterfield Canal Festival. James Yapp previews the event
T HE Chesterfield Canal Trust will be kicking things off with a splash at the end of June with its annual activity
festival.
The event will be held at Staveley Town
Basin on Saturday, 30th June, and Sunday, 1st July, 10am-5pm. The festival will involve all sorts of fun on the water such as zorbing and canoeing, along with a canoe polo demonstration match by the official GB canoe polo team.
The Swing Commanders are to perform alongside the canal
Although the festival has the canal at its heart, on-shore attractions will include birds of prey, archery, a variety of children’s rides, a climbing tower, radio- controlled boats, a face painter and vintage vehicles.
People can also expect to find scores of stalls of every type from home-made cakes, to old tools, to canal art to the National Trust. Several caterers and coffee stalls, plus a real ale bar run by Brampton Brewery, will ensure that no-one goes hungry or thirsty.
Along with generating a mix of entertainment and great local cuisine and crafts, the festival’s main goal is to raise funds for the canal restoration. Admission is £5, free for under-12s.
Also on offer will be great music in the
marquee with two evening concerts. On
Over the weekend, all four of the Trust’s tripboats will be in action; two of them also have wheelchair lifts. The trips will go through Staveley Town Lock and round the corner into the newly built Hartington Harbour.
There will also be demonstrations of water rescues by dogs from the Newfoundland Training and Demonstration Team for all the pooch lovers out there.
Friday 29th, June, on stage will be the Swing Commanders, followed the following evening by Some Antics and
Judy Dunlop & Jon Scaife.
Both concerts start at 7.30pm and tickets are available from the
Chesterfield Canal Trust website.
To top the weekend off, There will be a flypast by a Lancaster on
Saturday and a Dakota on Sunday.
Finally, on Monday, 2nd July, there will be a flotilla of all four
tripboats from Staveley Basin right up the canal to Tapton and back, with stops both ways at Hollingwood Hub and Tapton Lock. Tickets are £10, or £5 one-way. Ring 07925 851569 to book.
The Canal Trust is hoping to fully restore Chesterfield Canal’s link through to South Yorkshire and the River Trent. With only nine miles left to go, the Trust says money raised through the festival will help to make this happen.
The festival will offer all sorts of opportunities to take to the water
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