COMMUNITY spirit triumphed in Watchet after vandals cut out and stole a 20-foot section of rope from the town’s special rope walk.

The Watchet Community Makers, a group of volunteers who carry out projects for the local community, called in local rope craftsman Tim Green – and within four hours last Sunday, he had spliced in a new piece of rope and all was as good as new.

The rope walk was set up last year with a grant obtained by the Onion Collective, a local community interest company, to help increase visitor flow around the town.

The pathway runs from Watchet Boat Museum to East Quay, but a length of rope some 20-feet long on was cut out and stolen recently.

Watchet Community Makers, a project run by the Onion Collective, were trying to decide how to repair it, and Terry Walker, one of the volunteers, told the Free Press:

“We thought let’s have it done properly rather than just making do, and we’re lucky enough to have Tim ‘The Rope’ Green in Watchet, who is well known locally for his amazing skill in working with rope.

“He’s my neighbour so I popped round and he offered his services, doing a proper, seamanlike job and putting two long splices into a new piece of rope, a way of joining two ropes together so that it ends up the same thickness.

“It’s quite a skill and Tim is an artist with rope – tourists off the train kept stopping to ask him about it while he was working and said how wonderful it was to see these old skills being used.”

Onion Collective project officer Sally Lowndes said: “It makes you realise how lucky we are in Watchet, that the makers got to work to fix it with Tim’s help.”