Editorial forward or back? Will there be Canal Camps this summer? And will developers have got permission to trash the Uttoxeter? Or will the council have stood up to them? Going forward into a summer of Canal Camps? Are we being overoptimistic? Let’s just have a quick look back at the last six issues of Navvies, since the last ‘normal’ one came out in February 2020 with a preview of a jolly summer of Canal Camps to look forward to, lots of training opportunities to get us ready for it, a call for volunteers for Little Venice, and plenty of pics of people sharing WRG 50th birthday cakes on worksites up and down the country. And then it all changed. Since then we’ve had...
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The ‘Lots is going on in the background’ issue The ‘Cake and hope for the future’ issue The ‘Getting back to work’ (at least for local canal societies) issue What was going to be the ‘WRG is back on site’ issue, but despite two successful weekend digs turned into the ‘Taking the wider view’ issue as the Covid rates went up again The ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’ issue with WRG taking the first steps towards planning for future Canal Camps The ‘A way forward’ issue as those plans began to crystallise
Martin Ludgate
Given this list, I think you could be forgiven for feeling that after a year of false dawns, the credibility of this continuing optimistic tone is beginning to wear just a teeny-weeny bit thin. Indeed, you may well be having thoughts along the lines of “Come on folks, exactly how, why and for how much longer is Navvies keeping this pretence going?” And yes, while I stand by what we said at the time it was written in each of these issues (although it was subsequently overtaken by events multiple times), we do seem to have been predicting that “things are going to get better” for rather a long time, while for a fair bit of that time they manifestly haven’t got much better. Perhaps I should have gone with my initial gut instincts in the depths of winter and produced the “Christ almighty, can it get any worse?” issue. So all-in-all I fear that it might be getting to be increasingly hard work trying to convince you that any positive ‘looking forward’ type stuff in any more issues is to be taken seriously. Unless it’s accompanied by something a bit more concrete. Well in this issue, it is. Firstly, those of you who have been receiving an electronic 2014 WRG Camp on Uttoxeter Bridge 70. But will it ever see a boat?
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