Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 5th July 2026
Green light for Blue Loop campaign. Shire Brook successes. More open gardens. Out There news
Morning. We have a campaigning story today, as a host of organisations and fired up river volunteers start to tear, or at least talk, down the barricades on the Blue Loop waterside trail. We have more on the successes at Shire Brook nature reserve, and another brief Out There News.
And we’re now at 98% of our 350 full supporter target to launch our new Commoner’s Muck section for the hundreds of voluntary groups getting their hands dirty looking after our wild spaces.
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Fix The Blue Loop
Sheffield’s eight mile long tourist attraction begins a few minutes walk from the Town Hall. It’s even closer to the offices of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. So, you might ask, why has it got two holes in it?
This week, forty determined river and canal lovers wisely ignored the first sixty minutes of the England v Democratic Republic of the Congo World Cup game as they headed down to The Library bar in Attercliffe and launched a campaign to get those holes patched up and working again.
The Blue Loop is the circular trail from the Sheffield along the River Don up to Tinsley, then back along the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal to the city centre.
It’s a spectacular walking and cycling route, taking in wild creatures, gnarly local history, unexpected artworks, and the rebirth of the suburb of Attercllffe between the two waterways.
The Fix The Blue Loop campaign launched this week with a simple question: is a beautiful waterside trail important to the people of Sheffield? And if so, how can we get it fully open again, and keep it open?
The River Don section of the Blue Loop is otherwise known as the Five Weirs Walk trail, built and promoted through over twenty years of blood, sweat and tears, said Simon Ogden, riverside campaigner and one of the trail’s original founders.
Now it’s time for the council, local politicians and organisations to start working together to reopen our east end watersides, he said, along with an array of volunteers so fired up they’re willing to ignore the World Cup.
There are currently two main holes in the loop: one’s been there for nearly seven years, the other for eight months. (Imagine a main road closed for that time, chuntered the campaigners.)
Sunken Ambitions
A long stretch of Five Weirs Walk between Washford Bridge in Attercliffe and Stevenson Road collapsed in the floods of 2019. Further floods and enterprising tree roots eroded the trail even further.
An original repair quote of close to £3 million pounds from Amey left the route abandoned, with prospective travellers on the Transpennine Trail and National Cycle Network route diverted past a series of backstreet scrapyards and factories.
So the Five Weirs Walk (estimated by the Transpennine Trail Trust to be worth £1million a year to the local tourist economy) was no longer so popular.
More recently the trail charity Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (formerly Sustrans) worked out an alternative plan, costing around £1.3million. Engineer Andrew Pembroke of Walk Wheel Cycle Trust detailed in Wednesday’s meeting how the plan prepared for future flood events, such as large trees floating down the river and even submerging the trail.
The rebuild would retain the river width, protect wildlife and ideally last for 60-120 years, he said. But that £1.3 million pounds would need finding soon, because the remaining trail is crumbling away. The council’s Parks and Countryside department now look after the Five Weirs Walk, and seem keen to progress following the new plan.
The washed out route had a dusk to dawn security closure, because former adjoining site owners Thessco carried silver and platinum stocks. But prospective new owners Onboard Skatepark seem to have no qualms about a 24/7 waterside cycle, walking and skateboard route nearby.
Gated Commuting
The Full Monty film (which was made for a similar budget as Amey’s quote for the Five Weirs Walk repair ) opens with our heroes failing to haul a stolen metal bar across the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal near the Bacon Lane bridge.
A few yards away from cinema’s most famous canalside towpath a spiked security fence now keeps us away from a fairly small but challenging hole in the ground. The next available towpath, near Cadman Bridge, is two thirds of a mile away, effectively closing down the whole canal towpath route into Sheffield.
This repair is the responsibility of the Canal and River Trust, a charity formed when the public assets of the British Waterways Board were taken off the government payroll by the coalition government of 2012.
Nowadays, charities looking after practical things like rivers and canals are stretched for funds, so although the path was closed last year, no date has yet been set for the repairs.
A pot of development money (around £30,000) has already been allocated for footpath work from developers in Attercliffe, which could surely go to good use here, said Simon Ogden at the campaign launch.
A fellow campaigner added rumours the Canal and Rivers Trust may be asking developers for ‘airspace rights’ for a bridge linking their houses across the canal.
There were sharp intakes of breath at the sum involved, but it might actually enable the hard pressed charity to reopen a selling feature so important the developer named their new Attercliffe Waterside estate after it.
And the canal towpath will be a key commuting route to the city and railway station, for residents of a ‘low carbon community’ with few car parking spaces.
Simon Ogden feels Sheffield Council are more reluctant than their colleagues around South Yorkshire to provide walking, wheeling and cycling routes that might be seen as slow and picturesque rather than direct and speedy.
But local transport planners tell me they need to consider safety, and 24 hour options for all walkers and wheelers. I’m told women and new active travellers might well prefer a well-lit roadside to a dark riverbank on their way to or from work at nightime, or on a grim winter’s day. And Active Travel England, who fund the nation’s walking and wheeling trails, currently seems to favour those direct well-lit routes.
In the end, it’s down to political decisions, I’m told. If the Mayor of South Yorkshire and Sheffield councillors feel riverside or other green or blue routes are important, then policies will change.
In the meantime, the Fix The Blue Loop campaign will have volunteer clear ups later this year to stop the collapsed Five Weirs Walk degrading any further, and a full on fundraising and lobbying campaign is now launched.
Simon Ogden says he recognises the current financial and staffing constraints of local authority budgets. “But I think the council would be missing a massive trick if they didn’t accept our offer to work with them on this,” he says.
Further updates on the new campaign will be posted here and via the Friends of The Blue Loop social media pages.
Brief Out There News
Village Open Gardens - the nationwide nosey around the back gardens of your local village scheme continues, with Totley this weekend (4th/5th July), Hathersage & Longstone next weekend, and Calver, Curbar & Froggatt on 1st August.
Trees for Bents Green & Burngreave - the Trees for Streets campaign to crowdfund 14 new street trees for Burngreave and around the shops of Bents Green began with a musical variety show at Bents Green Methodist Church last weekend with local MP Olivia Blake in attendance (but not performing, I understand). The show raised £500 to launch the appeal for individual and businesses donations.
Shire Brook Survival Found
“Look,” says Shire Brook Valley Nature reserve volunteer Christine Titmuss in a small meadow by the visitor centre. “There are orchids here now!” After 18 months of digging, surveying, planting, counting and public engagement, east Sheffield’s once secret valley is secret no more.
There are more volunteers, more visitors, more wildlife and the small band of volunteers who’ve been toiling here for donkeys years have smiles on their faces and several more hands to the wheelbarrows on their working days.
A £1.3 million government Species Survival Fund project is now ending at the nature reserve, which has patiently grown into existence over the last forty years across a valley once used as coal mines, railyards, sewage and tanning works.
Shire Brook hosts its second BioBlitz event on the 21st July, where anyone can join in to count and marvel at the wildlife across the huge 100 acre site with guided tours from 7.30 am onwards. (I’ll have more on the site’s successes and future plans then, all being well).
The quiet and unassuming Sheffield council project officer for Shire Brook and surrounding wild places, Sarah Newman, tells me she nearly fell off her chair when she heard the government had agreed to invest over a million pounds in the urban countryside around her.
She sends me a list of achievements: over 123 acres of wild grassland and meadow created and restored, 9,272 trees planted, 1,442m of hedgelaying, 1,149 metres of new footpaths, 7 ponds created or restored, 35 school visits, 1,142 metres of ditches enhanced or created, 7,000 voluntary hours of conservation work.
It’s a Wednesday, when the visitor centre is bustling and the Cherry Blossom coffee van is on site. Volunteer Helen Twigg tells me this is the day to call down if you want to offer your services here, although she and several other volunteers work on most other days of the week too.
Crowds are bustling around the visitor centre, and a couple of teenagers on motorised bikes trundle past. There is vandalism, says Sarah, and there’s been damage to some new bridges from the motorised bikers, although the police are aware of the problems. But it’s a massive site, she adds, so most visitors can carry on without really noticing.
Engagement officer Meghan Tipping was hoping to learn more about wildlife when she bought a new pair of binoculars and began work on the project 18 months ago. Now here she is striding through the rustling meadow grass like Ranger Hamza.
“Ladies Bedstraw,” she says. “Teasel. Knapweed, Meadow Vetchling, Ox-eye Daisy, Red Campion, and look, a Thick-legged Flower Beetle! They’re on our branding now.”
Meghan shows me the piles of matting where Grass Snakes live and lay their eggs, and takes me along one of her new trails through a tunnel of woodland. This one’s about mindfulness, she says, which she has to explain to a sceptical Sheffield bloke of a certain age.
“I say stop here, and see how it feels on your face.” It’s cooler, I notice, and there’s a gentle breeze along the path. “It makes you stop,” says Meghan. “And just be here at this exact moment.”
I ask what the future holds, and Sarah tells me about a handful of maybe or fairly likely new funding bids, which can carry on maintenance work along with the volunteers.
There are Otters here now, the Common Frogs have returned, there are new homes for Kingfishers and Badgers, the Grass Snakes are nesting, and nearby, counts of Harvest Mice have uncreased from 40 to 215. Wild creatures are making their homes in the old sewage works, oblivious to funding bids and occasional vandalism.
“You gradually see how it evolves,” says veteran conservation volunteer Richard Pearson. “And it is evolving differently, and not necessarily the way you think, which is how it should be. You’re learning all the time, and you’ve got to go with it.”
More What’s On Out There (from Sunday 5th July)
A tiny selection from our (regularly updated) What’s On Out There news and listings post. Full version for full members, preview (& this week) for all at the link above.
Sun 5th - Yorkshire Rose women’s cycle rides - Oxspring
Mon 6th - Fri 10 th - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Tues 7th - Nature Natter - Heeley Trust sessions in the woods around Gleadless
Weds 8th - Longshaw Social Walk
Thurs 9th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment
Fri 10th - Balsam Bashing in the Loxley Valley
Sat 11th - CycleBoost cycle training - confidence & learn to ride, Greenhill Park
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I understand the security concerns about the canal towpath. It often feels a bit eerie when l run on it during the day and l am not sure l would try it at night. That said, surely the answer is to repair the closed section and get more people using it. It is, after all, one of the few flat routes in Sheffield.
The Five Weirs Walk closure is from Washford Bridge to East Coast Road.
The section from East Coast Road to Stevenson Road is still open and features Sanderson’s Weir and the Eye of the Needle public art. Not to be missed!