Help the Wooden Canal Boat Society Buy a Van

Hello, I’m Chris Leah, also known as The Ashton Boatman. In the above video I'm in The Wooden Canal Boat Society’s charity shop. It’s closed at the moment because of the Pandemic. We might be able to open again in a few weeks time if we’re allowed to, but we’ve got a BIG problem. Our van has died of old age and rust and because of the effects of the pandemic we can’t really afford to replace it. We can’t operate the shop properly without a van because we need it for collecting and delivering stuff and also we need it for maintaining the boats, carrying stuff for that.

If you don’t know about The Wooden Canal Boat Society, we save historic wooden canal boats. When we can we restore them and then we put them to work for the community. Using the boats for the community is very important for us. We run a recycling project and we have a well-being boat that helps people who’ve been suffering from depression and other mental health problems.
Both of these things came to a screeching halt with the pandemic but we’ll get them up and running again as soon as we can. However, at the moment the Number 1 priority is getting a van.

On a personal level, for the last 12 months I’ve been dealing with Long Haul Covid, which is a real pain and is making life very difficult but even without that I couldn’t carry a sofa on my bike or a big drum of tar. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work!

So, if you could help us out with a few quid in this sort of virtual whip-round thing then that would be really wonderful and we’d be very grateful.

We will be publishing the accounts for this on our website when it’s all done and, as a registered charity, at the end of the year The Charity Commission publish our accounts on their website anyway, so you’ll know where your money’s gone.

Thank you very much!

#needavan

Thank you very much for donating to the WCBS van appeal. The problems with our old van came at a difficult time as the society has been in suspended animation through the covid crisis. We had hoped to get another year out of it. However, with the fund at just over a quarter of its target there have been some surprising developments. We have been given a land rover. This is not a van, but, with a suitable trailer it can do the work of a van. We've decided to close the appeal and use the money so far raised to buy a decent trailer. If you don't agree with this course of action we will be happy to refund your donation. A volunteer returning after shielding has looked at the old van and says a friend of his can do the repairs at a reasonable cost. We're looking into this but it may take some time and we don't yet know if it is viable. The life of the old van is likely to be limited anyway even if we can get it back on the road. Whatever happens, as I stated before, the accounts for this will be published on our website. Thanks again for your help. Chris.