Tas Valley Way

Tibenham Church and the Tas Valley Way Link Project.

Tibenham is the only village of our five Benefice villages in the Broads and Rivers Leader + area and thus able to gain access to the Leader + programme which is a European funded programme. Tibenham is also in the Broads and Rivers Open Churches Project area. This is a Diocesan project, funded from Leader + and The Diocese, designed to open up the wonderful heritage of churches that exist in the area to more visitors.

Tibenham church has been awarded funding from the Norfolk Rural Community Council’s Community Chest ( Leader +), South Norfolk Council and the Diocese to

	Make Tibenham Church and Churchyard into an example of good open church policy locally
	Rejuvenate the local stretch of The Tas Valley Way so that walkers can use it and connect to the other villages locally
	Encourage more visitors to the village and its surrounding area

So far we have:

	Held a village meeting to discuss the project
	Talked with South Norfolk Council about an environmental and ecological check on the churchyard
	Cleaned the Churchyard in Autumn 06. The next Big Clean of the church and churchyard on will be in spring 2007.
	The footpaths now have good signage and will be looked after by Glyn Pugh.
	We have two Conservation site notices to put up from Norfolk Wildlife Trust, with whom we are working. Owls are back in the churchyard after three years.
	We are hoping for a geophysical survey to find the Guild Chapel to the Blessed Virgin Mary later in the year.
	Church literature is being revised and new stories from Thomas the Church Mouse and his friend Bertie the Bat will be launched in the Spring.

The project officially starts in February 2006 and finishes in September 2008.

We are awaiting delivery of two new footpath information boards from Norfolk County Council. We are finalising the information and the boards will be unveiled in spring 2007. The boards have three designated walks on as well as other Tibenham footpaths. The major one is the Tibenham part of the Tas Valley Way, which has just been cut so is easy to walk. The three footpaths are being maintained locally throughout the year. The footpaths map will be available for down load from the web site with other information provided by the Tibenham and Tas Valley Way Link Project.