A work by Monmouth sculptor Phil Chatfield is taking centre stage in an extraordinary voyage down the River Wye which will land at Monmouth Boat House on August 19 at 6.30pm, travelling past Dixton Church at approximately 6.15pm.

It will be accompanied on its final stretch by the Deputy Head of Monmouth School and his wife, both Atlantic rowers.

The aim is to highlight pollution in the River Wye and the sculpture, named Our Lady of the Waters and the Wye, is mounted on two canoes made into a catamaran and has been floated 75 miles, from Hay-on-Wye to Monmouth.

The pilgrimage aims to highlight the declining biodiversity in the Wye, which organisers attribute to pollution from chicken farms, overflow of sewage, excessive use of fertilisers, run-off from arable land, and soil erosion.

The group say that 3,000 tons of phosphates a year go in the Wye, when it can only cope with 300.

The wooden sculpture is about four feet high on a plinth one ft high. Philip has carved stone statues for Tintern Abbey, St Mary’s Church, Monmouth and elsewhere. It will be carried to St Mary’s Church for a joint 7pm Evensong with the vicar of Hay-on-Wye. The sculpture will eventually be sited in a hillside shrine at Capel-y-ffin, where, in 1880, the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to two boys of ten and eleven, one of whom said to the other: “if that thing comes any nearer, I am going to hit it with my stick!”