A grant of more than £79,800 from The Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled work to begin on an ambitious Heritage Project for the Bedford River Valley Park.

The first stage – now complete is an update of this web site. It’s very exciting to have made a start, but there’s lots to follow before March 2015 when the whole project must be completed. Actually there is still work to be completed on the ‘Heritage’ pages – if you take a look over the next month or two, some fantastic historical information will start to appear here.

There are information boards, due to be put in place very soon, across the whole of BRVP. To add to the interpretation in the area, ‘listening posts’ (image thanks to Catherine Croney) will be installed at a variety of locations – fantastic for visitors who will be able to turn a handle and hear spoken information about the view before them.

A ‘geocache trail’ will be developed to lead people into and around the River Valley Park. Geocaching is already a popular pursuit and one that we hope will bring in lots of visitors, both young and old. For younger visitors particularly, new activity sheets will be developed – downloadable from the web site. To complete the information provision, downloadable leaflets will be designed.

Involvement of local people is a key part of the project and there will be workshops and training provided for volunteers later in year. Volunteers will play a significant part in collecting the heritage information that will form the core of the project.

If you might be interested in getting involved in this exciting and fascinating project please get in touch with us by emailing Darren.woodward@marstonvale.org or calling 01234 762603