North West are back in action

groups NWPG

As the regional mobile volunteer groups awaken from their slumbers,we follow last month’s KESCRG and LWRG reports with news from NWPG

Newbury Working Party Group (NWPG) Update January 2022

Yes we are still here and are beginning to stir from our Covid-19 forced exile over the past two years! As it’s been a long time since we’ve made contact with fellow restorers in the outside world I thought that it might be a good idea to give an update on our future plans as well as explaining to newer folk who we are and what we have done in the past, and who knows, perhaps encourage some of you to join us.

NWPG was formed in 1981 with the main aim of promoting the use of volunteers in the physical restoration of the Kennet & Avon Canal. In that particular aim we were only partially successful when we led the construction of the footbridges on the Caen Hill flight of 29 locks at Devizes - which I am pleased to say are still there today, over 30 years after the canal reopened.

Fortunately, during the 1980s we were able to divert our energies to the Basingstoke Canal. Here, along with WRG, KESCRG and the local teams we were trained up in the skills needed to restore canals, assisting with the reconstruction of the locks at Woking (the St John’s flight) and Woodham, up to the canal’s reopening in 1991.

Not wishing to lose the benefits of the joint working between groups established on the Basingstoke, in 1991 we set up with London WRG, KESCRG and BITM the Dig Deep concept. In return for local canal trusts providing us with worthwhile and well-resourced projects, the WRG teams guaranteed minimum levels of weekend digs and week-long camps. A number of canals took part, with the Cotswold Canals and Wey & Arun Canal being the main beneficiaries. The various sites and tasks are too numerous to list but we have worked on locks (repair and rebuild), bridges (moveable and fixed) and spent numerous hours re-surfacing towpaths, clearing vegetation, cutting down and re-planting trees. Like every WRG group, our construction and organisation and safe working skills have improved over time which, along with increased mechanisation, has meant that we now achieve far more in a day’s work party than we did in the early days.

Since the start of the pandemic we have managed three working parties – all on Pictures by Bill Nicholson

NWPG on the Wey & Arun: reinforcing at Birtley on the 2019 camp...

the Wey & Arun, comprising the manufacture and installation of a temporary timber bridge deck on the lifting bridge substructure at Birtley. This substructure was built by the three very successful joint WRG, KESCRG and NWPG camps in 2019. All our three working parties were three-day digs with rather different accommodation arrangements as Covid precautions: the first involving travelling daily from home to site (not ideal) and the last two when we took over the White Hart in Cranleigh with everyone booking separate rooms. The temporary bridge is now in place and a circular permissive path has been opened along this attractive hillside length of the canal.

Forty one years on and let’s be honest, with an ageing profile, the pandemic has made us look to the future. Pre-2020 our work parties were perhaps too frequent for our core members to keep turning out. Also a number of our team are now regulars with the Wey & Arun Northern Work Party and having retired find it easier to work on the canal during the week.

Nevertheless, weekend digs do have their benefits – particularly on the social side. To stop them completely would lose the social benefits of a Saturday night together in the hall/pub, would make it difficult for group members from further afield to work with us and would impact our ability to run our normally very enjoyable and productive summer camps.

So, for 2022 we are testing going with just 4 weekend digs, of which two are extended to three days, plus a week camp. We are hopeful that post pandemic, we will be able to slowly rebuild our numbers so that we can achieve around 8 – 10 on site per day and with a large enough group overnight to make it worthwhile to provide catering and accommodation. As to venues, our main focus is likely to remain the Cotswolds and Wey & Arun Canals though we are open to suggestions from other canal societies on projects that we may be able to help.

NWPG has an active social group including a lot of retired diggers! We meet ndevery 2 Tuesday in a pub in Reading (note change from previous diary listings) – currently the Allied Arms in St Mary’s Butts. We have a WhatsApp Group which is active and on which would encourage people to join as it is the easiest way of keeping in touch. Other social events include organised walks in the Berkshire/Oxfordshire area, skittles evenings and our autumn Reading pub crawl.

New volunteers are welcome, and despite the name of the group (reflecting its origins) you don’t need to come from Newbury, or anywhere near that part of the country. If you would like to join one of our digs (the next time out is on 12/ 12 March at Inglesham) or want to keep informed of all our activities by e-mail or WhatsApp please drop me an e-mail –billnicholson@gmail.com Other dates are still being finalised but will appear in the Navvies diary in the normal way.

Bill Nicholson [We hope that the ability to plan ahead with a little more confidence will enable us to reinstate the Navvies diary pages soon ...Ed] page 11

groups WRG North West

A...and meanwhile, WRG North West have been to the Montgomery Canal to continue preparations for the building of the new School House Bridge

WRG North West on the Montomery Canal

The weekend of 11-12 December saw 11 volunteers turn out at School House Bridge on the Montgomery Canal for WRG North West’s first ‘proper’ weekend since September 2020, when we cut down about 200 yards of quite dense regrowth from earlier Reunion Weekend clearances.

Our original plan had been to remove and burn as much of the cut material as possible by hand and then use the small 360 degree machine to lift the roots so that they, too, could be burned. However, when we arrived, Mel Roberts, the recently appointed project manager for the School House Bridge building project, asked us to concentrate on the other side of the road. In practice, because the other side of the road wasn’t ready for machine work, three people and the machine stayed on the original side on Saturday, reducing to two and no machine on Sunday.

The material to be removed on the other side was a mixture of scrubby hedge, concrete fence posts, stumps and various forms of wire fencing, including some very rusty barbed wire. Once the hedge had been cut down the machine made light work of the roots, except for one almighty brute which took about an hour to remove. Needless to say, by the time the roots were out there wasn’t enough brash left to burn all of them, though about half a dozen were carried across to the original, rather healthier fire. The concrete fence posts fought hard as they were well buried in stones (the remains of the old bridge?) and anchored with generous amounts of concrete. Nevertheless, most of what could be removed had been by the time we retired to the hall for a slightly later than usual lunch. Just for a bit of variety, Malcolm and John H went to investigate the redundan container on Crickheath Wharf, left from the experimental channel lining camps about 10 years ago. This needs to be moved soon so as not to interfere with SUCS work. It had been welded up but we managed to cut our way in quite easily using an angle grinder powered from the inverter in Malcolm and Barbara’s camper-van. Inside wasn’t as bad as we had feared. Burnable rubbish went on one of the fires

Clearing the canal bed adjacent to the site of School House Bridge page 12

and a dustbin full of non-burnables was removed for binning, along with a few tools to be added to our collection at Mike’s and a box of smaller odds and sods for further sorting by Malcolm. That left 100 metres of French drain, some working gloves and garden hose, all of which Shropshire Union Canal Society are happy to take, and some time expired lime mortar which we are hoping the locals can dispose of. The cooker isn’t even worth cleaning so it, and various other essentially metallic items, can go with the container.

Accommodation was in the Llanymynech Church Hall which, after a slow start, proved warm and comfortable. Memo for future visits: the central heating takes 4-6 hours to warm the hall from cold but, once it has, the lack of thermostatic control means that selectively turning off individual radiators is the only way of controlling the temperature without having to keep turning the heating on and off manually. Barbara’s catering was up to its usual high standard, with Saturday evening’s meal of turkey stew almost qualifying as Christmas dinner.

Covid precautions didn’t work quite as anticipated. In particular, restricting access to the kitchen to the cook proved unviable. Access by others was minimised but Barbara could not have coped without some help. Restriction to a cook plus one assistant might be worth considering in future. Everyone self-tested prior to joining and individually wrapping sandwiches worked well, as did clothes peg identification of mugs. Having all self-tested, we didn’t wear masks in the hall. By the time you read this we will have been out again on a one-day dig: the Hollinwood Canal Society have got permission from Oldham Council for Saturday digs scrub-bashing at Daisy Nook on 8 January and 5 February so we have ‘adopted’ the first of these. Also not strictly NW digs but litter picks on the Yellow Brick Road (The Ashton Canal Stockport Branch) resumed in Gorton on Saturday, 20th November; this one produced 26 bags of litter, of which two were flattened aluminium cans for our friends in the Wooden Canal Boat Society. Dealing with the troublesome fenceposts