fact file Swansea

The Canal Camp project: Lock chamber wall restoration and re-pointing and rebuilding a set of steps at Trebanos Lower Lock.

Why? Trebanos Locks are part way along a restorable length of canal in water from Clydach to Pontardawe which could be opened to navigation.

Canal

The wider picture: With the top five miles from Godre’r-Graig to Abercraf largely lost to 1970s road improvements, and the bottom five miles from Swansea Docks to Clydach mostly buried under urban development, Swansea Canal Society is concentrating on the middle six miles from Clydach to Godre’r-Graig - including Ynysmeudwy and Trebanos locks plus the buried lock at Pontardawe. But in the longer term a diversionary route could be created, avoiding the missing lower length, and ultimately reinstating the link to the Tennant and Neath canals.

Length: 16 miles originally

Locks: 36 originally

Date closed: 1928-1960

Abercraf

Upper lengths lost under new road

Trebanos

Canal Camp site: Trebanos

Day One: Saturday – the best weather of the week! All four nations of the UK were represented with folks travelling from all over Britannia - from as close by as sleepy Devon to as far away as Scotland. The wonderful Ystrad…. (or often simply referred to as “Y”) Scout Hall was quickly prepared for action due to the prior experience of Sue Jones and Will Radice-Horne (the Cambrians) who had been digging on the Swansea Canal on previous camps. Such local knowledge was vital and kept us on track across the week. Any good team should quickly move through the forming, storming, norming, and Swansea performing stages. This team saw its fair share of ‘storming’, though thankfully only in the meteorological sense of the word!

The heavy rain and strong wind experienced during the week seemed to suit our Caledonian volunteers and they were often heard remarking, “It’s just like summer… without the midges!” as the next deluge threatened to drown us.

We had two Peters on the camp and, in the interest of good communication, one, at his own suggestion, was renamed Tim! With the surname Mullett, our new Timmy might have had his big hammer with him, but we didn’t get to see it! The large hall would have allowed us plenty of space to exercise respectful post-Covid separation, but we spread even beyond the four halls of the hall – it was a scout hall after all! So, with two campers in their mobile home, one in his caravan and the other Peter at the mercy of the worst that the Welsh weather could throw at him in his tent, we had ample space to spread out.

The team was a wonderful mix of characters, experience, interests, backgrounds and foibles, and the Saturday evening introductions set the scene for a week of good humour and building new friendships.

The humour started on the first night when Devonian Andy’s mattress deflated. This collapse was repeated on nights two to seven! “Do you know how much I paid for it? …£10”, he was heard to exclaim as if it were an expensive purchase; a theme repeated after successive nightly collapses and mirrored by the repeated sighs and raised eyes of his campmates. We developed a broad definition of the word ‘humour’ over the week!

Sunday: Rain A leisurely 9am start on the first day almost saw us heading home for a couple of hours as the expected deserted track to the lock and empty car park that had been the experience on the camp leaders’ site visit just two weeks before was found to be solid with cars and burly, teenage, future national Dragons players! The rugby season had started which meant that access to the site was challenging. After a spell of endearing ourselves to the locals by helping to direct cars and answer questions about WRG, we got the work started on three battle fronts: the raking out of the vegetation and old mortar in preparation for pointing; the clearing of vegetation from the heavily overgrown ‘island’ between the lock and the bywash; and the rebuilding of the dodgy steps.

Deputy camp leader Jonathan Green took charge of the ‘Islanders’; the ‘Pointers’ were a largely self-managing group, and the steps were put fully in the hands of David Smith after he’d carefully inspected the scaffolding in the lock chamber.

The site was heavily contaminated with Japanese Knotweed, so we had environmental safeguards in place which included boot and tool washes at the end of each day. Thankfully the local canal trust had isolated the offending perennial weed into a cordoned-off area, so the remaining vegetation was quickly cleared, uncovering stone chippings and sticky mud beneath.

Evening Social: Chuckle Brothers’ quiz: 10/10

Monday: Rain Leadership skills come in many guises, but Paul’s appeared to have deserted him as a plan emerged to sieve and wash the two tons of newly discovered chippings which any sane person would have interpreted as a gag. We were sadly mistaken! He was clearly in cahoots with the very resourceful Swansea Canal Society Chairman who was probably a Blue Peter presenter in an earlier career who presented the Islanders with a... “here’s one I produced earlier”…. stone sieve. Over the week we ‘chipped away’ (typical camp ‘humour’ persists) and a pile of clean chippings was produced using a system more secret than the Colonel’s recipe.

Evening Social: A visit to the Miner’s Welfare Hall to watch a film where, owing to tuck shop lighting issues, the illumination of cinema snacks was achieved by the vendor’s phone (thought to be a ruse to hide ‘sell-by dates’ by some cynics). This tuck shop performance was the highlight of the evening…just sayin’!

Tuesday: Showers On Tuesday we were visited by the CRT Heritage Officer to discuss the finer skills of lime mortar mixing and repointing. Our lock mortar has been analysed to the nth degree. The supposed faithfully reconstituted blend (which includes coal dust at particular, microscopic level) was not to everyone’s taste (visually speaking) appearing to be a startlingly white when dry and suggestive of an Italianate marble bathroom. Several different mixes were tried and left to dry. A decision about the final mortar recipe would have to be made at the highest level to satisfy the exacting requirements of CRT, the local Canal Society, and the local conservation officer who has responsibility for local listed heritage structures along the canal. The weather conspired against us and prevented the lime mortar going off enough to assess the true finished colour. As a result, all the Pointers’ effort went into preparing the walls thoroughly for the follow-on camp so that they can get cracking as soon as the lime mortar mix is agreed. In typical camp humour, some wag described the indecision as Mortargate. In the meantime, the lock wall preparation resulted in the most pristinely prepared walls in Wales.

It was great to work collaboratively with Canal & River Trust and get the benefit of the experience of a lime mortar expert who has repointed the 2000-year-old Roman Lighthouse at Dover.

We had the most amazing lunch provided by the local Canal Trust. We felt very welcome and valued!

Evening Social: plan to go to the pub but have a better offer to stay at the scout hall! 11/10

Wednesday: Rain with Thundery Showers As the week progressed David worked steadily on the steps up to the lock gate quadrant, recycling old stone to realign the treads. The Chuckle Brothers continued to keep everyone in high spirits by recycling their old jokes.

The rest of the team started to find their niche. Timmy put everyone to shame with his work ethic and seemed to be on some (probably illegal) fortifier. Blarney Stone Paul gave exhaustive (exhausting?) leadership talks which gave everyone the chance to catch up on much needed sleep. We all concentrated intently on Sandy’s very softly spoken Caledonian discourse, pondered, then asked him if he could say it again. Will took on the leadership initiation role of packing the vans at the end of the day – and has a career in house removals, it seems, unless we can find him a leader’s role in WRG.

Weather watcher Richard pampered our dirty boots in the boot wash each day before we left site but his vital role of keeping us from being struck by lightning was greatly appreciated by all. We learned that as well as being Jenny’s sous chef, Liz was good at chatting. Jonathan excited us with his van cornering; luckily, we packed extra pants –no near misses were experienced in the ferrying of campers to and from site.

Sue was deemed our camp Duchess and presented with slippers and served bedtime cocoa on a silver (OK melamine) tray. We’re hoping that this tradition was maintained on Swansea week two! Invading hornets were swatted, transforming important wall-mounted scout memorabilia into matchwood (redacted in the interests of being invited back) - an easy challenge for Repair

Shop Dave. Peter regaled us with deep and meaningful conversations and sighed a lot. Meanwhile, Paul kept up his daily WhatsApp calls with Morgan at CRT to resolve Mortargate– at least that’s what he said he was doing as he sat on the neighbouring park benches or sheltering from the storms in the gazebo!

Social: Ten-Pin Bowling 9/10

Thursday: Thunder, lightning, and torrential rain Work on the main tasks proceed apace and saw us moving to the other main role of rebuilding a section of lock wall. Will and Sue carefully prepped the wall and without wanting to steal the thunder of Swansea week two’s report, the foundations were laid for some beautiful stonework.

We uncovered a quarry of recovered stone and local Canal Society Chair, Gordon, operated his stone carrying boat in the style of Mr Big in the 007 Live and Let Die speedboat chase. We need a video version of Navvies to show this Oscar winning stunt action in its full glory.

Social: As is customary, we were treated to dinner and a cultural evening hosted by Gordon (a dead ringer for Alf Thompson in Postman Pat) who serenaded us with several ballads – each one followed by a quick check he hadn’t offended anyone - oft met with a less than unified consensus. In later songs it was felt safer to substitute certain words with hand and body movements. This evening was somewhat muted given the news that Her Majesty the Queen had died. God bless you your Majesty! 10/10

Andy’s flatress continued to deflate. Peter sighed… justifiably.

Friday: sunny spells

The week ended on a sombre note following the Queen’s sad passing. We soldiered on in a rather gloomy (psychological and indeed meteorological) atmosphere. Continuing with our work and ensuring that the work we had committed to had been completed to the best possible extent would have resonated with Her Majesty. Black WRG tshirts were worn by some.

We wrapped up the work on a day of much better weather – just in time for the van checks!

We felt we left the lock in pretty good shape for Ruth and Sue’s camp, but the week is best summed up in highlighting the biggest failing in Paul’s delegation ‘skills’: asking us to write the camp report!

Social: After a great deal of fun, AKA exhausting hard work, we had a relaxing evening with Chinese or fish & chips, mutual applause, and beer / whisky drinking. 12/10

Saturday: Glorious weather, blue skies, wall to wall sunshine After a super-efficient cleaning roster masterminded by budding leader Will, ably assisted by Sue and Liz, all campers had left by 9:30am. To be fair, van mover extraordinaire David was back on site at 1:30pm after having taken van BOB to Crosshil ls for the Mon & Brec camp. ‘Every camp needs a David!’, said Liz!

Mike ’arry Harrison and Andy Harrison

P.S. we didn’t mention the daily toolbox talks – probably best!