BEAR ESSENTIALS The Newsletter of : -
IWA Warwickshire Branch Issue No. 39 – April 2014.
Friends In Deed In mid January, in a ‘groundbreaking’ initiative by CRT, five Warwickshire Branch members joined seven other CRT - WM volunteers to assist the professionals with some critical remedial work to lock 40 on the southern Stratford Canal. For some years now a growing ‘bulge’ in the lower, near-side wing-wall of the lock, combined with some subsidence in the quadrant brickwork above, had caused BW, now CRT, some concern; however, tackling the problem never quite made it onto any high-priority list for winter maintenance.
Apprehensively watched by husband Nick, and fellow Branch member Neil Skerry; committee member Carole Nicholson, acquaints herself with some of the ‘Big Boy’s Toys’ used on this project. Meanwhile (below) Pat Rudeck just gets on with the job. Photos by Steve Lambert of CRT.
Such problems don’t go away, and if left un-tackled, sooner or later, at the very least, can lead to boats jamming when using the lock; or, at worst, result in a ‘blow-out’ – with far more serious consequences for all traffic on this busy canal. th This year above all; the 50 anniversary of the reopening of the canal, with traffic-flows on the southern Stratford likely to be the largest ever, as boaters head to and from Stratford and the Avon for a summer of celebration; the consequences of closure were too great to contemplate. This probably was a factor in CRT’s thinking when they conceived such an ambitious volunteer project to help bring this into their winter maintenance programme - and in turn was of course a factor in our willingness to help CRT. Whether the twelve volunteers were ‘Friends of CRT’ – or, as IWA members, were ‘Friends of the Waterways’ - didn’t matter; at a time of need they were all ‘friends in deed’.
So far this year one cannot but be impressed by the quantity, quality and sheer variety of the volunteering work that members have undertaken. From the quiet, unglamorous, on-going, ‘back-room’ work of cataloguing thousands of waterway slides at the County Records Office, to Stratford’s Lock 40 high-profile rebuild, our Branch members have been ‘popping up’ with a ubiquity that almost matches that of CRT’s CEO – Richard Parry. There is far more enthusiasm in general around for our inland waterways now, and here at the heart of the network our Branch, and you its members, more than reflect this. Enthusiasm can be catching, and last month it seemed to have been caught by more than 80 members and local residents, in what was – by a long way – our most successful ‘clean-up’ to-date. See page 3. Some months ago I wavered when wondering how we could rise to the ‘Year of The Bear’ challenge in 2013-14; but I now feel quite confident that we can. Editor:
Ian Fletcher. Committee Changes:
At our AGM, our secretary Tina Jackson stood down, and our long-serving treasurer Anthony Davies announced his move to a ‘temporary tax-haven’ in n-east China! - fortunately Ian Jackson has agreed to assist by looking after financial matters here ‘on the ground’ in Warwickshire, and Greta Russell will undertake secretarial matters until a Tina replacement can be found. However, despite these moves, the need for ‘new blood’ is now even more pressing – as our Chairman comments on page 2.