Christmas Fair 2014 in pictures

We raised £729.30!
Thank you all who made our Christmas Fair another fabulous event with, donating, volunteering, spending money (& hours in the cold), and just joining in. The circus performance was a particular highlight!
Here’s some photos, a bit later than hoped due to critical website maintenance:
 

London Open House

We’re opening our moorings and boats again for London Open House: Sunday 21 September 10-5pm. Tea, cake, and a unique opportunity to view traditional and contemporary interiors of narrowboats. Come along!

 

CHUG History Open Day 2014 (photos)

 

History Open Day in collaboration with Laburnum Boat Club

 

Join us on Saturday 21 June for a History Open Day at the moorings! To celebrate Laburnum Boat Club’s ‘Regent’s Canal Heritage Day’, we are opening our two resident traditional narrow boats for viewings. We will also serve our popular homemade cakes, hot & cold drinks, and there’ll be games, stalls, and some life music. Come along!

Slalom Course at Kingsland Basin

Canoe Slalom Course at Kingsland Basin

This year CHUG are building a Canoe Slalom Course in Kingsland Basin.

The slalom course is a series of pairs of light poles suspended from overhead wires forming “gates” that the canoes have to negotiate.  The paddler and the canoe (or kayak) have to travel through each of the gates (sometimes backwards) in a particular sequence  in the shortest time possible.

The course is being built primarily for the use of the many local children and young people who attend the Laburnum Boat Club just along the canal. The Laburnum Boat Club (a small charity) is a community-based watersports centre set up by local parents thirty years ago. The Club has an active Canoe Slalom Team that has been competing in events around the South East all year. They are led by one of the Club’s senior members – 18 year old Vanessa Humphries. They are all very keen and work hard but at the moment they have nowhere to practice.

This is why CHUG are coming to the rescue. CHUG are committed to protecting the waterways in the borough and enabling local people to get access to them and enjoy them. Using their own efforts and fund-raised resources they have designed, and are in process of building, a terrific new slalom course for the kids to train on. The course should be completed in the coming months, and will be a valuable asset for local children – encouraging them to take exercise, enjoy a constructive leisure time, and appreciate the canal and its environs.

Canoe Slalom is a worldwide sport and Great Britain won two medals (one gold and one silver) at the Olympics twelve months ago (watched by the Boat Club’s slalom team!).

Laburnum Boat Club are one of the best clubs for local kids, and are proud to be one of their partners. Visit their website www.laburnumboatclub.com and find out about more activities. On the news page  you can also see how you can donate through shopping online: “Give as you live”. Help Laburnum buy their badly needed next fleet of kayaks, by just shopping online!

 

 

East and west moorings linked in Kingsland Basin

Anyone who has been to one of our fundraising events recently – this is where some of the tea-and-cake cash has gone. CHUG recently bought some new pontoons to join together the moorings on the two sides of the basin, and volunteers spent the day collecting them and putting them together, with the aid of a leaky drysuit and a lot of trial and error.

Joining the two sides is important because at the moment the moorings are cut off from the canal towpath – access to the basin is through the new development on Kingsland Rd. This makes it impossible to hold events that draw people in off the towpath, like last year’s hugely successful cafe that ran every weekend throughout June, July and August.

It will be another few months before the development on the southwest corner of the basin will be finished, and the towpath access will be open again. Keep an eye on the website, sign up for our newsletters (bottom right of the homepage), or like us on Facebook to find out about events coming up.

 

 

CHUG allotment in the Evening Standard

The CHUG allotment featured in the Evening Standard on the 12th of September, 2012. They caught wind of our allotment project and their Homes and Property section got in touch and interviewed CHUG’s Val Easty, top allotmenteer.

The article goes into detail about the choice of veg we grow – ‘cut-and-come-again’ crops like spinach, salad leaves and raspberries, rather than one-offs that wouldn’t go around all of the basin dwellers. They were also interested in the drainage of what is effectively a giant container garden, the difficulties we had along the way, the sad demise of the duck population and the introduction of worms to the allotment.

Read all about it…

CHUG in the Evening Standard

CHUG in London Open House

On Sunday the 23rd of September we will be opening the basin as part of London Open House.

We’ll have tours of a few boats, boat rides, and tea and homemade cake on the tranquil communal floating pontoons. Drop in for a nose around, we’ll be open from 10am to 5pm.