Today's thoughts from Kim:

What a beautiful start to the day!  I had a little lie in as I was home late last night and then I got to run through the woods near my home before hoping on the train and coming into work.  Spring is bursting through and the sap is most definitely rising.

Now its back to the office and it's a welcome change that sees me based out of the office for a whole day; a meeting in London was cancelled so I have the whole day to work on a tender for a potential project.  It sounds really interesting but it's a very complex project on a tight deadline so we need to make sure that we can deliver what we promise and at the right price both for us and for the client.

A day at the office also means I can catch up with my post and also have a proper lunch rather than a sarnie grabbed on the go.  I'm meeting up with my sister today and we'll be trying out one of the new restaurants around Gloucester Docks.  It's a beautiful place to be and the new designer shopping arcade is a real boon to shopping and getting those forgotten gifts!

Yesterday I was in Manchester at an Access to Nature evaluation training day.  It was a great opportunity to take a good hard look at our Birmingham project and really identify what it was that we were doing and how we were going to measure that.  It's very tempting when dealing with a blank sheet of paper to design complex and sophisticated evaluation tools but often the simplest methods are the best.  We spent a lot of time looking at the beneficiaries and it was amazing to realize the true impact of the project and just how many people we had the potential to reach.  So if you go down to the Heartlands Ring in Birmingham in the next month or so be prepared to be stopped and asked or counted or involved in some way shape or form!

Find out more about how we working with our partners to transofrm Birmingham Heartlands Canal Ring into a resource for the whole community.

Sometimes it isn't easy for people to get out to see, explore or discover their local waterway due to age - too old, too young, mobility issues or simply a lack of interest. To help overcome some of these issues our Canal Community Liaison Officer in Scotland, Steven Cole, got together with the Open Museum at Glasgow Museum Resource centre to create a Glasgow Canal Kit.

The kit contains museum objects such as a model puffer boat, a kingfisher, butterflies, plant-life specimens, a horseshoe, a windlass, boat tickets and small samples of goods that were both transported on and made along the canals. There are also photographs, a map, suggested walks and a history of the canal.

Local community groups such as youth groups, nurseries, care homes, community centres can borrow the kit free of charge and help more people uncover the history of their area, the wildlife that make their homes along waterways or perhaps how of Glasgow has changed over the years.

This is just one of the ways that the Trust is helping to make the story, heritage and wildlife of our canals and rivers more accessible to the local community.

You can find out more about this kit by contacting the Open Museum.

I'm also trying to stick to my New Year's resolution of doing some kind of exercise each day and with Spring on its way, the office's location in Gloucester Docks leaves me with no excuse but to get out and pound that towpath on my lunch break. If you are able to get along to a canal or river, they can be fantastic places to set a new PB (personal best). A nice, flat route makes a marked difference to the hills of Herefordshire where I live!