MORE than 50 enthusiastic residents of Clapham and surrounding villages gathered to celebrate the first day’s digging on their hyperfast broadband project.

Volunteers had spent the day under the watchful eye of a BBC Look North television crew as they dug a trench across a field at Bleak Bank on the lower slopes of Ingleborough peak near Newby.

They then installed a duct for the fibre optic cable that will bring hyperfast, gigabit broadband to Bleak Bank and properties in Clapham, Keasden, Mewith and Newby.

The initiative has been spearheaded by Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN), whose aim is to bring hyperfast broadband to the rural communities in North Lancashire, South Cumbria and North Yorkshire

The organisers say the community-led project will support new businesses, encourage visitors to the area and enable families to make full use of digital technology at speeds that will more than rival those anywhere in the world.

Clapham-cum-Newby is the first parish in North Yorkshire where B4RN broadband will be available to every property.

The initiative involves local farmers and contractors digging in the fibre network in return for shares in B4RN.

Most of the cables will be laid under farmers' fields and common land, which is much cheaper than digging up the roads and is totally independent of other providers’ networks.

To date £130,000 has been raised to build the core network, with more than 100 landowners and volunteers coming forward to help.

B4RN chief executive Barry Forde attended last week's "ground breaking" ceremony and praised the effort that had been made to get this far.

And he also paid tribute to the volunteers who would "make the best broadband in the world available to this corner of Yorkshire”.

Clapham Hyperfast will spend the rest of the year installing over 15 miles of the B4RN network in a loop around Clapham, which will eventually bring hyperfast broadband to almost 400 residential and business properties.