Group report ...and so are London WRG

Groups London WRG

WRG’s London-based mobile weekend working party group has also been out and about lately, on the Wey & Arun and Buckingham canals

London WRG

You can glean quite a lot about what London WRG’s volunteers have been up to during their first two working parties in over a year (and their first ‘proper’ weekends with real WRG accommodation and catering since March 2020) by reading the Kescrg group report on the preceding pages. Why? Do we take our lead from Kescrg? No, it’s just that we visited two of the same sites - the Wey & Arun and the Buckingham. And that’s because they both happen to be ones where there’s plenty to do, that we can also get to reasonably easily from the south east where most of our volunteers live - making it suitable for a few of our volunteers who were happier to just join us for the day on site.

So I’ll concentrate on the other work we did that hasn’t already been covered in Stephen’s Kescrg report. I won’t dwell on the main work we did in October on the Wey & Arun, putting up for one of many concrete pours at the new Tickher’s Heath road crossing, but I’ll mention that at the same time several of us laid our first bricks on a London WRG weekend since February 2020, putting up the side walls on the abutments of the pedestrian / bike / horse bridge that forms the first part of the new road crossing. And we seem not to have entirely forgotten how to lay bricks.

No surprises that Adrian ‘Velcro’ Sturgess found himself a digger to play with. That’s something which hasn’t changed in our 18 month holiday from digging.

And another small team put a load of willow (cut down from where it was making access awkward from the road into the superduper site compound) through the chipper.

Oh yes, and we sorted out our catering kit. You wouldn’t believe what gravy browning and Swiss rolls turn into after 18 months...

And despite our lowish numbers (seven altogether), local site leader Dave Evans was suitably pleased with what we managed to achieve over the weekend, and we hope to be back there soon.

Our next outing in November was to the Buckingham Canal - and once again the main job for the weekend was one that Kescrg have already covered in their report. This was curing leaks in the canal by digging a slit trench in the towpath, filling it with clay (the locals called it ‘dinosaur poo’), pounded down to make it watertight, then putting the topsoil back on top and trying to leave a decent surface for walking on. I get the impression that rewatering a canal that’s been dry for some decades takes a fair amount of this kind of work before all the leaks are sealed.

Other jobs that we helped with included building a ‘bug hotel’ - a habitat made of old decaying wood to encourage invertibrate wildlife species. It had already been christened ‘Buggingham Palace’ by the local Buckingham Canal Society folks, but there was some discussion about whether it should have a branch of Starbugs...

There was also some of the first scrubbashing that we’ve done since the end of 2019, with a few wind-blown trees to be dealt with, and we were introduced to the Canal Society’s fleet of workboats. Oh, and Adrian S found another big digger to play with. Local site organiser Terry Cavender was suitably pleased with our efforts, our numbers were up to nine on this one, and we’re likely to be back there in the new year.

Anyway although our numbers are still low (and can’t be too much higher while Covid safety means we need to distance in the sleeping area), we’ve had a couple of useful weekends. And despite our Christmas joint dig with Kescrg having been cancelled (due to the uncertainty surrounding the new Covid strain - not to mention whether anyone was prepared to let us sleep in their village hall at the moment) the group is back up and running. For 2022 we hope to take up our long-planned intention to have a first dig on the old internal canals at the Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Mills. New volunteers welcome: see our page on the WRG website or find London WRG on Facebook for details. Martin Ludgate page 37