The age of steam is alive and well and environmentally friendly on beautiful Coniston Water in the scenic Lake District – thanks to special supplies of fuel from Welsh forests.
The historic Steam Yacht Gondola, which has been plying Coniston Water since 1859, has its boiler fired with logs from a Ruthin-based timber company.
Clifford Jones Timber, on Brickfield Lane, Ruthin, who annually process over 100,000 tons of wood from sustainable forests, supplies the Blazers logs which power the Gondola.
The yacht started its summer season of trips around the five-mile long lake this month and Nigel Bacon, Sales Manager for Clifford Jones Timber, said: “The Gondola is steam-powered and originally had a coal-fired boiler but it was recently converted to use wood and our Blazers logs have been found to do the job best.
“They’re made from compressed sawdust and are a by-product of our timber processing plant here at Ruthin which produces 130 tons of kiln-dried logs a week.
“They’re bound for the nation’s wood burners, solid fuel ovens, garden chimineas – and for the furnace of the Gondola.”
Clifford Jones Timber, the UK’s largest producer of fence posts – they make four million a year – prides itself on using every scrap of the 100,000 tons of sustainable timber which comes through its gates each year and even makes mini-logs from the off-cuts of the fence post production.
The 86 foot long, 42-ton Steam Yacht Gondola can carry 86 passengers and plies Coniston Water throughout the summer, from April to October, doing daily half-lake cruises and special themed cruises four times a week.
Jo Haughton, of the National Trust, said: “We’re very proud to operate such a unique historic vessel on Coniston Water.
“We’re also delighted that we’ve been able to introduce ‘green steam’ without detracting from the same serene sailing experience today as enjoyed by the Lake District’s early Victorian tourists.”
The SY Gondola was built in 1859 in Liverpool and sent up to Coniston in sections by rail while her rebuild in 1979 was at the historic Vickers Yard, in nearby Barrow in Furness, where most of Britain’s nuclear submarines have been built.
These days she carries around 25,000 passengers every summer and Alan Jones, Chairman of Clifford Jones Timber, said: “We’re delighted to be associated with such an important and historic vessel.
“The National Trust did a fantastic job of rebuilding the Gondola and it’s wonderful that she is still carrying passengers in this beautiful part of the country and we’re proud that it is our wood fuel that is powering her.
“We are a timber company but it is part of our ethos to make use of everything that comes through our gates and we have been making Blazers logs for ten years and they have been a very successful product.
“They are 100 per cent natural wood with no additives. They’re held together by the natural lignin in the wood which is released because of the heat and pressure under which they are produced.
“They have only 12 per cent water – natural timber can be over 65 per cent water – and burn with a natural flame in an open fire or wood burning stove, and give off a tremendous amount of heat and produce less tar, which means you will have a cleaner chimney.”
Clifford Jones Timber was founded by Alan Jones’s father in 1948 and has been at its Ruthin base for 25 years: “When we started here there were two people employed here and now there are 77,” he said.
“Every piece of timber that comes through these gates is used. There isn’t any wasted and there aren’t many industries that can say that.”
As well as the heating products and fence posts, they also produce laminated timber for the construction and leisure industries– they won a £250,000 contract to provide over 600 lampposts for Center Parc’s new Woburn Forest holiday village which opens this spring – gates, bedding for horses and even cat litter.
The wood pellet side of the business was launched in 2008 after the construction of a £5 million, 20,000 square foot factory at the Ruthin site on Brickfield Lane and it now produces 30,000 tons of fuel pellets every year for use in biomass heating systems.
