NAVVIES 320

navvies

navvies

volunteers restoring waterways

volunteers restoring waterways

Cromford Canal: Work starts at Beggarlee

Cromford Canal: Work starts at Beggarlee

Cotswold

Canals: John Robinson Lock takes shape

Cotswold Canals: John Robinson Lock takes shape

Intro WRG Canal Camps Intro WRG Canal Camps

In this issue you can find reports and pictures from four of our weeklong Canal Camps this summer on the John Robinson Lock on the Cotswold Canals, the site that has been receiving the biggest input from us this year. But we’ve had camps on other canals too, including the Lichfield and the Lapal. We hope to include reports from these other sites in the next issue, but here are a couple of pics as a taster.

The picture above shows work in progress on the Lapal Canal, where WRG volunteers put in paths and steps to provide access to a length of canal in Selly Oak Park which is scheduled to be the terminus of the first section to be reopened - see pages 32-35 for a progress report on the Lapal.

The picture to the right shows our work on the Lichfield Canal, creating a towpath as part of Danford Moors Ecology Park (and as part of restoring the canal), and installing buried cable ducting for an electricity supply which will feed a pump to keep the canal topped up with water, and in the future a charging facility for electric boats.

In this issue Contents

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Production

Editor: Martin Ludgate, 35 Silvester Road, East Dulwich London SE22 9PB 020-8693 3266 martin.ludgate@wrg.org.uk

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Navvies is published by Waterway Recovery Group, Unit 16B, First Floor, Chiltern Court, Asheridge Road, Chesham HP5 2PX and is available to all interested in promoting the restoration and conservation of inland waterways by voluntary effort in Great Britain. Articles may be reproduced in allied magazines provided that the source is acknowledged. WRG may not agree with opinions expressed in this magazine, but encourages publication as a matter of interest. Nothing printed may be construed as policy or an official announcement unless so stated - otherwise WRG and IWA accept no liability for any matter in this magazine.

Waterway Recovery Group is part of The Inland Waterways Association, (registered office: Unit 16B, First Floor, Chiltern Court, Asheridge Road, Chesham HP5 2PX), a nonprofit distributing company limited by guarantee, registered in England no 612245, and registered as a charity no 212342. VAT registration no 342 0715 89.

Directors of WRG: Rick Barnes, George Eycott, Emma Greenall, Helen Gardner, John Hawkins, Dave Hearnden, Nigel Lee, Mike Palmer, George Rogers, Jonathan Smith, Harry Watts.

ISSN: 0953-6655

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Contributions...

...are welcome, whether by email or post. Photos welcome: digital (as email attachments, or if you have a lot of large files please send them on CD / DVD or contact the editor first), or old-school slides / prints.

Contributions by post to the editor Martin Ludgate, 35, Silvester Road, London SE22 9PB, or by email to martin.ludgate@wrg.org.uk.

Press date for issue 321: 10 September.

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© 2023 WRG

Cover: Clearance work on the first of five successive Canal Camps on John Robinson Lock on the Cotswold Canals uncovered the remains of the old lock gates. Follow progress through to rebuilding the chamber walls in our camp reports on pages 10-19 (picture: Mike Palmer) Back cover: Land drainage works by WRG and Friends of the Cromford Canal at Beggarleethe bridge in the background will one day cross the canal. See pages 22-26 (Martin Ludgate)

chairman ’ s comment

“We are back in business”, says Chairman Mike Palmer as he looks back at a successful summer of Canal Camps and towards our autumn plans

Chairman’s comment

In the last edition of Navvies my ‘Comment’ was about what might be called the seasonal rhythm of WRG: at that point of the year there are lots of emails / messages / meetings etc. all discussing the vital preparation that needs to happen. Now it seems we have moved on to the time of year where things start to settle down again after a busy and productive summer.

Not completely settled, you understand: as I write this both Canal Camps circuits still have one more Canal Camp before that circuit is completed. But probably by the time you get to read this our summer will be over and the ‘season of WRG’ will have moved on to the time when there are three main activities:

1: Receiving our Canal Camps kit back from their circuits and carefully nurturing it back to tip-top condition

2: Our regional/weekend groups getting back up to speed now they have their vans & volunteers back from the summer,

3: Reporting back from each camp – possibly to the WRG Board in the case of any serious issues but just as importantly, reporting back to you, dear readers, as to what we got up to this summer.

And this edition of Navvies is full of that sort of thing. Lots of Canal Camp reports plus some reports from other “not quite Canal Camps” that also occurred over the summer (for example the Cromford work – see page 22).

So, even though it seems a bit overwhelming, it’s important to realise that an edition of

It’s not just about Canal Camps: WRG and Friends of the Cromford in action at Beggarlee - see page 22

Martin Ludgate

Navvies full of Camp reports clearly represents success. I don’t really want to bring up the issue of Covid but there is no doubt that it seriously put paid to a lot of our activities. So yes it’s important that we clearly give the message that we have restarted our activities and found them still to be an effective tool.

In other words we are back in business.

It’s obviously important that this message goes out to all those stakeholders we need to influence, all those local restoration societies we need to work with, our parent body the Inland Waterways Association, and the general public. But most importantly of all – it needs to go out to all you Navvies readers. Because, be in no doubt about it, you are the most important part of WRG’s support network. Some of you are part of the current generation of active WRG volunteers; some of you are longstanding readers who are still canal digging; some of you are no longer active but still giving donations; some of you are still writing letters in; some of you are happy to qualify for the description ‘armchair supporter’. But most importantly you care. You care both about the Waterways Network and about Waterway Recovery Group. My absolute thanks for all your support over the last few years.

There is of course another reason for publishing reports in Navvies . It gives people the opportunity to thank all those who have helped them achieve the work they describe. Such recognition is important in an organisation such as ours – in exactly the same way that everybody should feel able to make a valuable contribution, nobody should feel their contribution goes unrecognised. These reports hopefully go some way towards saying thank you to all those people who did help to ensure that our activities were successful.

Finally, you will not be surprised to see that there is no Camp report from me, even though I led two this summer. So I’m going to use this ‘Comment’ column to make those recognitions: for all those that have helped me restart my WRG activities after my accident two years ago my heartfelt thanks for your love, care and support this summer.

Mike Palmer

Oh, and just to prove that Navvies isn’t just about Camp Reports, Martin has written a splendid ‘Editorial’ on pages 5-9 – long may Navvies continue in this vein.

Man of vision: the WRG Chairman on the Cotswold Canals at John Robinson Lock

Becky Parr

Why we do it...

The current progress on many projects confirms how important our contribution to restoration is... until Defra sticks a spanner in the works...

You

can see why we’re doing this…

This issue – as is often the case – divides roughly into two halves. About half of the magazine is devoted to reports from Canal Camps and WRG weekend working parties – my thanks to those who’ve sent me their reports in time for this issue, I hope everyone enjoys reading them (I did!) and I look forward to receiving some more from the latter part of the camps programme in the following issue. And most of the other half of the mag is given over to reporting back from local canal societies giving a wider view of the progress they’ve been making on their projects around the country.

And I can’t help thinking that there are some good examples right now of how the two fit together.

On the Cotswold Canals, they’re ramping up the major construction work on the Cotswold Canals Connected scheme that will see something approaching £20m (with a big chunk from the Lottery plus ‘matching funding’ from local authorities, the Cotswold Canals Trust and others) spent on reopening four miles of canal (and linking-up to another six miles already restored) including new road and railway bridges and replacement of a mile of completely obliterated canal. And they’re having to work hard to keep it on track at a time of high inflation affecting construction prices particularly badly. At the same time, in this issue you can read reports from a couple of what has ended up as six weeks of Canal Camps on John Robinson Lock – it’s the major input to the Cotswold Canal Connected project by WRG and other visiting volunteer groups, and it’s making a very real contribution to ensuring the whole scheme stays on target.

Now let’s move on to the Lapal Canal. You can read in this issue about how Lapal Canal Trust’s scheme has completed its first really visible success story with the opening of the new Whitehouse Wharf. This will in the not-too-distant future form an important part of the access for boats to a new length of canal which is already part-built, and will lead on into Selly Oak Park. And as this issue goes to press, our volunteers have just started work on a Canal Camp carrying out improvements to towpaths and access to the canal in the park. This will form part of the attractive visitor moorings at what will be the temporary terminus and destination of the initial stage of the canal reopening.

And it’s happening on the Lichfield Canal too. You can read about Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust’s progress on their two current sites, at Tamworth Road and Darnford Moors (and there’s some very good late news which just made it into the Navvies News pages: the rebuilding of the demolished Cricket Lane Bridge is funded and will go ahead). And also in this issue you can read a report from the first of two weeks of Canal Camps at Darnford Moors.

And yet again, on the Cromford Canal: there’s been a fair amount in Navvies in recent years about the Friends of the Cromford Canal’s Beggarlee project. This aims to reopen the tricky first 1.5km of the canal northwards from where it leaves the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill, including two new staircase locks, adaptation of a disused railway bridge to carry a canal under a main road, and new lengths of canal to connect it all up. It’s going to be an expensive project and much of it will of necessity be done by professional contractors, but in this issue there’s a report of a WRG long weekend doing some fairly heavy land drainage works. It’s unglamorous stuff, but vital – not only does it need to be completed before work can start on building the canal channel, but it also had to be begun sharpish to avoid missing the deadline specified in the planning permission for the whole scheme.

I could go on. Those are just the ones that feature in this issue – but I think they’re enough to make the point. It’s clear why we’re doing it (quite apart from it being an enjoy-

able opportunity to get out in the countryside, socialise, and all the other good things about canal digging): it’s because we (WRG and other mobile volunteers) play a vital role, complementary to the local restoration societies’ own volunteers and the professional work paid for by major funding, in helping to keep canal restoration projects moving.

There are plenty more examples – but one which features regularly in these pages is missing this time. And I’m concerned that whatever the ins and outs of this particular case, it might be a worrying portent of things to come. Which brings me to the second part of this editorial...

Or can you really?

You probably already know, especially if you’re a canal boater or you’re otherwise interested in the working navigable network of canals rather than just the long-abandoned ones we work on, that the Canal & River Trust (the national charity responsible for running most of the country’s canals and a fair number of its navigable rivers) is in a spot of bother moneywise right now.

As I mentioned in previous issues, in summer 2026 we reached the scheduled time for Government department Defra to decide how much (if any) public money it would be giving CRT every year towards maintaining its waterways after the current public support contract runs out in 2027. And after the deliberations dragging on for over a year, it eventually announced its decision in July 2023.

It’s not good news. The annual grant (agreed as part of a 15-year contract signed when CRT was formed as a successor to the former public corporation British Waterways in 2012) is currently £52.6m per year. This has been fixed since it lost its index-linking a couple of years ago (as written into the contract), so it’s losing value every year thanks to inflation, and will continue to do so until 2027. But at that point the new contract kicks in, and things get much worse. The grant doesn’t just fail to keep up with inflation, it drops by 5 percent in actual cash every year for the ten years of the new contract, ending on just £31.5m. Coupled with the recent high inflation which was never anticipated when the original contract was set up and certainly hasn’t been allowed for in the new one, this is very worrying.

It was always expected that there would be less cash post-2027. CRT has been working to extract the maximum income from its property portfolio and other investments and commercial income (to the point where canal supporters have accused it of selling the family silver), not to mention pushing up licence fees to maximise income from boaters. But while at a pinch this could probably have enabled CRT to cope with either a sharp rise in inflation or a reduced grant post-2027, the two together make for a double whammy that’s had the Chief Exec talking about the likelihood that without extra funding canals could be closed down permanently for lack of cash to maintain them.

That’s not to say CRT’s reached the point of an actual ‘hit-list’ of canals for the chop (although CRT did do some computer modelling along those lines earlier when it looked like Defra might pull the plug completely). It’s more that resources will be stretched to the point

London WRG and KESCRG towpath-laying on the Lichfield at Darnford

Martin Ludgate

where a combination of major engineering work being needed and unexpected large-scale costs (such as a canal breach) is likely to happen sooner or later which would leave CRT with ‘difficult decisions’ about what to repair, and what would have to be left out of use indefinitely.

As you can imagine it’s turning into a bit of a storm. Lots of waterways supporters have been writing to their MPs: some from all parties are known to be sympathetic to the waterways cause; but others have replied simply parroting Defra’s thoroughly misleading figures showing that it’s giving even more to the canals in future than it has in the past (largely because (a) there were a couple of lean years right at the start and (b) there are more years to cover between now and 2037 than there have been since 2012), and suggesting that it’s only because CRT has failed to become self-sufficient (which few thought was ever a realistic likelihood) that they’re having to be so outstandingly generous as to provide any cash at all post-2027. Meanwhile protest cruises are being organised, some people are looking to the next general election… but I won’t go on about this – it’s more the realm of our parent body the Inland Waterways Association, see waterways.org.uk.

You might think that this is rather peripheral to WRG’s activities, but do remember that a number of restoration projects are on waterways that come under CRT’s responsibilities even though they aren’t navigable, and where (although we can’t expect CRT to come up with the major cash for restoration, we (or more often the local canal societies that we work with) have to deal with CRT when agreeing the work, producing safety paperwork, and so on. These waterways include for example the Montgomery, the Grantham and the Wendover. And the last of these is the one I referred to above regarding the restoration project which usually appears in our Progress pages but is absent this time. And that’s because CRT seem to have had some kind of change of mind regarding permissions for the work, which involves removing some mildly unpleasant (old domestic rubbish including ashes mostly) but technically ‘hazardous’ infill. Now I’m not getting involved in the details – mainly because I don’t know them – I’m simply using it as an example of how easily work can come to a standstill if CRT don’t agree permissions. Which might happen more often if they’re so strapped for cash that they can’t even support us at that relatively modest level.

But where the CRT funding crisis does affect us in WRG and the canal restoration movement in general in a broader sense is that people are asking “Why spend money on derelict canals that could be better spent keeping the navigable ones from falling derelict?” or “What’s the point in trying to restore canals when we can’t even maintain the ones we’ve got?” In the case of the first of these, the answer is that for a great deal of the money that goes into canal restoration this isn’t really a valid comparison. The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Towns Fund and the Levelling Up Fund, three which have between them put some tens of millions into waterway restoration in recent years, are not going to respond to the CRT funding crisis by saying “OK, we’ll give it to CRT to top up its annual maintenance budget”. They’re one-off grants to fit those bodies’ criteria in regeneration or heritage restoration. That’s not to say it won’t be worth CRT searching (as I know they’re already doing) for funds and sources of money where it does fit the grant-givers criteria, but I don’t think a transfer of (say) the Cotswold Canals Connected grant to CRT’s national dredging programme is either likely or helpful. And I’d say this applies to most of the cash raised by restoration projects.

Answering the second question is a little harder. I have my own thoughts, but I had the opportunity to ask CRT Chief Exec Richard Parry for his take on it. And along with his comments which tallied with some of what I’ve written above – that CRT (and for that matter its predecessor British Waterways) has rarely if ever provided major cash for restoration (and indeed, many of its boat licence holders would be unhappy if any cash from the maintenance budget was diverted that way). But that even more so, the restoration movement needs to be mindful that CRT has to concentrate its limited funds on having to “work very hard” to keep the core network; and not to harbour expectations of much being available from the Trust. He did, however, say some positive things about restoration groups being “resourceful”; about the need to keep the reopened lengths of the Montgomery navigable; and that perhaps some of the “creativity” of the restoration groups could be harnessed to help the core network. But on the “why continue restoring canals when the core network is at risk?” question, his view was that the canal restoration is a way of “galvanising support and raising awareness and enthusiasm” for the waterways as a whole (in other words that

carrying on restoring derelict canals is actually helping to support keeping the navigable network intact, rather than drawing away support and putting it at risk. He concluded that CRT “wants it to continue.”

And my own view? It’s tempting to say that “we’ve been here before” – but I’m not sure that’s the case, or not for a very long time. Yes, there were the BW funding cuts of 15 years ago and the ‘Save Our Waterways’ campaign with protests around the system; the ‘Tunnels crisis’ of the 1980s (several tunnels were shut for five years or more until extra Government cash was found); and more. And despite this, canal restoration carried on and we’ve enjoyed the fruits of those projects which could have been stopped on a “not worth it when we can’t keep the system open” argument. Such as the Rochdale, Huddersfield, Montgomery and more. But I don’t recall any Chief Exec ever going public on an existential threat to the waterways system before. Mind you, a BW Chief Exec doing so as a Government appointee would probably have got the sack for it!

However, go right back to the early 1960s when canals were still being closed down –the Forth & Clyde, several links on the Birmingham Canal Navigations network; the Runcorn Locks connection on the Bridgewater. And others were under threat: the Macclesfield, the south Oxford and the Chesterfield among them. And against this background, the southern Stratford Canal was restored and reopened, the country’s first major canal restoration and first large-scale volunteer effort. What a good job there weren’t a bunch of doom-mongers saying “I don’t know why you’re bothering – there are canals still being shut”. Or more likely, that there were, but that the Stratford’s restorers didn’t take any notice of them.

And that’s my take on it. We may well have one hell of a fight on our hands to keep the system intact. But I believe that there’s a hope that the arguments for the benefits of waterways have been put forward sufficiently convincingly that even Defra (or whoever takes over when this sorry little department is finally put out of its misery) will be persuaded to fund it properly. Or alternatively that some other model for funding the canals can be found. Quite possibly at the expense of having some lean years in the meantime with long closures and poorer standards of maintenance everywhere, until the penny drops that maintaining them properly would have been a better idea.

And if and when we achieve that, I don’t want there to be a load of unrestored canals that are beyond hope (if there’s truly such a thing), and that we gave up on restoring because we thought it wasn’t worth it.

And on that cheery note I’ll finish. Keep the faith, keep fighting the cutbacks (or ‘limits to Defra’s infinite generosity’), and keep restoring canals!

Martin Ludgate

The Stratford Canal - restored while canals elsewhere faced closure threats

Martin Ludgate

camp reports Cotswold

WRG’s biggest 2023 effort is at John Robinson Lock, being rebuilt as part of the volunteer contribution to the Cotswold Canals

Connected project

Cotswold Canals, John Robinson Lock The big 2023 Canal Camps project

John Robinson Lock, formerly Westfield Lock, on th Stroudwater Navigation (part of the Cotswold Canals), is being rebuilt by volunteers as their major contribution to the multi million pound Lotterysupported Cotswold Canals Connected scheme (see page 11).

It was always going to feature prominently in the WRG Canal Camps programme this summer, but some late changes to the schedule saw it featuring even more prominently with six week-long camps taking place there in July and August.

We don’t yet have a report from week one, but on

this page are three pictures from that camp showing what the lock looked like at the start of work. Then on the following pages are reports from weeks 2, 3 and 4 carrying on the good work...

Removing the old lock gates, unused since the canal shut in 1954

Rebuilding the overlow bywash

culvertClearing infill from the lock chamber

Cotswold Canals John Robinson Lock

Week 2: NWPG camp 8-15 July

Saturday 8th July and week 2 of what is to become 6 weeks of WRG Camps at John Robinson Lock, formerly Westfield Lock, led by the NWPG regional volunteer group. NWPG’s last camp on the Cotswold Canals was in 2017 when we spent a week in glorious sunshine rebuilding the old brewery wall adjacent to the canal in Stroud and constructing a nuclear bunker at Dock Lock – well a bywash overflow that looks like one. This was not to be a week of glorious sunshine.

With all the buildings at Brimscombe Port including our former accommodation now demolished and awaiting re-development (including re-creating a canal!) we were back at the rather fine Selsley Scout Hut – our last visit being in 2002. “Hut” is a bit demeaning as the hall is very well appointed (has five toilets and a shower!) with two rooms for sleeping and the finest view of any canal work party accommodation that I know. The only slight drawback is that the cooker is a basic domestic job – too small to cater for the needs of 18+ hungry volunteers. However Mike Palmer and Mitch had sorted this by bringing in the WRG cooker and parking it in the hallway. Not ideal but it worked.

Having a camp in between other consecutive camps on the same project is great for the camp leadership team, as everything is in place on arrival. No vans to collect; no showers to set up; plenty of leftover food from the previous week; and any issues with the hall have been resolved by the first week. It is also possible to get to the site and see how work is progressing and plan accordingly. In our case this was particularly useful as it identified that further time was going to be required to complete the clearance of spoil from the lock chamber before scaffolding could start. We were also able to run through all the site and other issues with Mike – specifically that of vehicle access, which had very nearly derailed the whole camp programme there.

A small team were detailed to be on site first thing on Saturday to pick up with the lock clearance where Mike’s team had left off. After all, the hired plant was thereso no point in wasting it.

Meanwhile by mid-afternoon the regular NWPG team had arrived at the hall. We were joined for the week by Jane and Filippo (both with previous camp experience under

their belts) and Dave who was commuting from Stratford on Avon on a daily basis and newish to canal restoration. Bed territories were claimed, introductions made and the safety video and catering toolbox talks held. The barbecue was lit and rapidly moved under cover and the jigsaw started. Later a select few checked out The Bell Inn – pleasingly still open – but now very much gastro rather than the characterful village local that it had been back in 2002.

Sunday morning and off to site. Vehicle access to the lock was now available from the A419 around the Forest Green Football Club’s new training ground under construction nearby. However most of the route was a grass verge which turned into a skating rink when wet, so that generally we only took one van down to the lock while parking the other at the Prentice Field Cotswold Canals Trust compound at Eastington; the walk to the site being fine so long as you are not carrying heavy stuff such as scaffolding. Work at the lock had progressed well the previous day but there was still another day’s work to do before volunteers could work in the bottom of the chamber. Moving the material was also now more difficult as the nice dry stuff on top of the infill gave

Week two: finishing the chamber clearance...

Pictures by Bill Nicholson

way to the slurry beneath. The 8 tonne digger was also too large to swing through 360 degrees while in the chamber so that the material had to be dragged back down the lock before being loaded into the one operational dumper parked at the bottom of the ramp partly under the bridge. The dumper could get into the lock (where it sat on the brick invert) but it couldn’t then get back out up the often wet earth ramp without being pushed by the digger. All rather tedious.

Always up for a challenge, digger driver Pete B and dumper drivers Duncan, Mike F, Pete Taylor and trainee Dave pressed on, such that by Monday morning the lock chamber down to the lower gate recesses was ready for the final manual clearance by shovel prior to the scaffolding going up. While all this was going on the rest of us had not been idle. Rob B continued with his artful work re-building the brick by-wash culvert that he had started on the earlier camp. Phil set to work on re-bricking the towpath side upper gate recess where the scaffolding was already up. Others moved coping stones away the lock edge into piles and a start was made on that much-enjoyed task of canal restoration – brick cleaning!

Back at the depot a stalwart team spent a day sorting and loading the WRG quick-fit scaffolding into a trailer from the container there, all of which was down on site by the end of Sunday.

Monday morning – scaffolding the whole lock chamber commenced. Erectors Rob N, Duncan and Jon P went down into the chamber sending up regular demands for particular items. The first two bays down from the top cill were quickly completed allowing the wall dismantling teams to get under way. Once the remaining sludge had been manually deposited as far down the lock as was sensible, the other scaffold bays went up – a task that included Jon P wading in sludge to get the scaffold feet in place. By early Wednesday the whole chamber down to the lower gate recesses had been fully scaffolded. This allowed the teams of dismantlers and later bricklayers to work on the full length of both walls.

The walls are being rebuilt with recycled bricks on the front facing courses and new imperial bricks filling in behind. The latter are bright orange do not match the old. The recycled bricks all have to be cleaned with the proviso that a brick must

have at least one decent face. Getting enough to complete the whole job may be a challenge and it will be interesting to read the reports on this from subsequent camps. Generally the north facing (southern) wall is in worse condition than the other side, and the wall has had to be taken down further –though generally over the front course only. Thursday and an untypical day of warm sunshine. By now everyone had settled into their roles, and bricklaying and mortar mixing were in full swing. Mention should be made of the unsung heroes, Dave R, Filippo and Steve who uncomplainingly slaved away cleaning bricks and mixing mortar. Drier weather meant that we also took the digger back into the lock chamber taking out more silt from the lower end. This was aided by using the submersible pump to take surplus water from the chamber out over the top cill. We didn’t finish, though, and it was clear that KESCRG were going to have plenty more to take out on their camp. To this end, having abandoned all work on the lock on the Friday, the opportunity was taken to exchange the 8 tonne digger for a 6 tonne machine which hopefully was going to be more manoeuvrable in the chamber. Away from the site we kept ourselves

...putting up the scaffolding...

amused with games of Molkky, an evening trip to Bisley for pub skittles, the jigsaw of course, and on Friday afternoon (because of the rain) a trip to the cinema in Stroud. Just like last year, our planned boat trip had to be cancelled – not for lack of water this time, but because of broken engine mounts on the CCT trip boat. This satisfied the work fanatics as they had all day on site on Wednesday.

Of course the whole week would have fallen apart if we hadn’t been well fed. Sue and Dave did us proud yet again, culminating in a fantastic roast on Friday night which was just what was needed after the disappointment of not getting to site on our last day. In a change from the usual diet of fish and chips on the cook’s night off, Steve took to the cooker with an excellent contribution (which also saved on the budget!). Thanks to them all. Beer naturally found its way into our unwinding.

To conclude, although the whole team only worked for five days, we made great progress such by the time we packed up on Thursday evening the re-building of John Robinson Lock was well underway. The week

reminded us of old, when we got wet on a regular basis, and it certainly made our job more challenging this time. Previous years we have complained it’s been too hot. Never happy! Thanks to everyone for supporting our week and working so hard and without complaint! We’ll be back at the lock in November if the other camps have left us anything to do.

fact file Cotswold Canals

The Canal Camp project: Rebuilding / restoring the derelict and partly dismantled John Robinson (formerly Westfield) Lock .

Bill Nicholson

Length: 36 miles

Locks: 56

Date closed: 1927-46

Why? It’s been chosen as the major contribution by visiting volunteer groups to the Lotter y-funded Phase 1b section (Saul Junction to Stonehouse), while the big engineering jobs (such as the railway and motorway crossings and reinstating the ‘missing mile’ of canal are tackled by contractors

The wider picture: The Phase 1a section (Stonehouse to Brimscombe) is largely complete. A confirmed Lottery grant will reopen the all-important Phase 1b (Stonehouse to Saul), linking the restored section to the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal in around 2026 and adding ten miles to the national waterways network. That’s a significant step towards evential opening through to the Thames.

Phase 1b: Saul to Stonehouse

Canal Camp site: John Robinson Lock

Phase 1a: Stonehouse to Brimscombe

Phase 3: Brimscombe to Cerney

Phase 2: Inglesham to Cerney

...and full speed ahead with bricklaying on the chamber walls

camp report Cotswold

For the third week of this summer’s six-week blitz at John Robinson Lock, it was the turn of our friends in KESCRG to take up the reins...

Cotswold Canals John Robinson lock

KESCRG Canal Camp 15-22 July

Week 3 of 3 4 5 6?

Saturday: Stephen Davis and I rocked up to Selsley scout hut rather early for the baton/ flight case hand over from week 2 leader Bill Nicholson of NWPG (something about baby ballet and needing to be out of the hall early), but this gave us the chance for an early look round site to see what had been completed over the previous two weeks of camps before the rest of the volunteers arrived in the afternoon.

Afternoon/evening was filled with the usual camp activities of site visit, safety talk and general catch-up, along with playing the game of packing all the vehicles in to the car park while still being able to get the vans out. Lasagne courtesy of Eli was followed by a few beers in the Bell Inn which has gone a bit (a lot) upmarket since we last used it but remains very welcoming, if unfortunately closed Sunday and Monday evenings.

Sunday: New campers were introduced over

breakfast to camp organisation Ed-style (teams and job assignments); the more regular volunteers gave the usual pithy comments to the parish notices. Day one, as usual, would be a bit of a learning curve but as we were week three on the same site, everything had been left well prepared for us.

The lead brickies for the week (Mick L., Ian W., John H.) along with Paul and David Miller were pointed in the direction of the main task for the week: the towpath side lock wall that required about 14 courses of brickwork to be added. Alan Lines, John C., Nina and Filippo took on finishing off the compound side lock wall which had been mostly completed by NWPG during week two.

With these tasks swiftly in progress (supported by Tim, Ian S., Chris and Sam mixing and brick cleaning) another small team of David Smith, Mk2 and Bernd carried on with the chamber clearance. By the end of the day, the compound side wall was complete and ready for coping stones, enabling the camp to concentrate on the tow path side for the rest of the week. With the

Main job for the week: completing rebuilding one of the lock chamber walls Ed Walker

Bell Inn shut in the evening, a small team headed off for a few beers at the new(ish) Stroud Brewery.

Monday: More bricklaying along with a bit of scrubbashing to allow machine access to the coping stone store on the towpath side of site – more on this later in the week! More digging under the bridge and the towpath had been fully exposed but still more mud from the chamber has to be removed. Tim Lewis found the aptlynamed Lewis pins and got one corner quoin stone ready for moving.

Tuesday: More bricklaying, mixing and movingby this point all the nonbrickies who were interested had had a go at bricklaying. With the lock chamber pretty much clear of plop, a small team of scaffolders started to extend the scaffolding to allow access to more of the lock. We had finally run out of bricks that needed cleaning, the policy decision was made to complete the tow path side wall in new bricks and there was much rejoicing. Evening entertainment was a few games of pub skittles at the Bell in

Repointing original brickwork

Frampton: choosing team members by van seemed the easiest way to do it, and in a hard fought match, team SAD won.

Wednesday: Half day today due to a boat trip from Wallbridge to the brewery and back. First stone moved; the use of Lewis pins (a type of self expanding pin inserted into a hole drilled into a coping stone) allowed precise movement of the stone and no

Clearing under the lock tail bridge Using a Lewis pin to lay a coping stone

Ed Walker

Tim Lewis

Ed Walker

de-slinging operation to disturb the mortar bed. Bricklaying and excavation continued, but still no sign of the bywash outfall.

Thursday: David Miller swapped with David Smith on the excavator and set to with gusto to remove even more spoil, David S meanwhile arranged the shift of the site container (to allow demolition and repair of the lock wall next to the bridge) and spent a lot of time carving bricks into useful shapes for the brickies who had reached the awkward stage of tying new bricks into old courses. More scaffolding was completed; a small team liberated most of the locals’ scaff planks to allow decking out of the chamber. Tim found a hammer and bolster and spent part of the afternoon starting the controlled demolition of the wall next to the site hut. We headed off to Malswick on the Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal after leaving site to see the progress on last year’s project, really nice to see it in water! [see ‘Progress’, page 36]

Friday: Last day on site, and the bricklaying team had obviously had their Weetabix and laid bricks at an incredible speed. An early sharp sand delivery enabled two mixers to be used and the team did not disappoint, laying about one and a half pallets of bricks in the day and completing the facing bricks for the whole chamber wall. Cotswold Canals Trust’s Jon Pontefract was heard asking “What are you doing with all that sand?” when yet another delivery was requested!

Tim upgraded to power tools (courtesy

of Mick) and he and Paul carried on with demolishing the old cement mortar repair in the lock wall. With the camp now being the middle week of five, site pack up was significantly easier, a quick count of tools and a tidy and it was done. Week four leader Stephen ‘Ricey’ Rice arrived mid afternoon and the baton was passed on. The end of camp party was quiet but the Bell was welcoming as usual.

Saturday: Very early breakfast (6.45am!) due to baby ballet again, but did mean everyone could head home early.

An excellent camp, many thanks to all those who came along and mixed, brickcleaned, moved materials, pointed, dug, scaffolded and laid approximately two and a half thousand bricks. Special thanks to Eli for keeping us fed so well all week and Stephen Davis my assistant.

Ed Walker

Passing through the restored Griffin Mill Lock on the boat trip

Excellent progress by the end of the week

Ed Walker

Tim Lewis

camp report Cotswold

And Leader Stephen ‘Ricey’ Rice and one of his volunteers are here to tell you how the fourth week at John Robinson Lock got on... in rhyme...

Cotswold Canals John Robinson Lock Week 4: 22-29 July

Week four continued the demolition and rebuilding work at John Robinson Lock after a late schedule change from Weymoor Bridge, which we hope to return to in future. We brought the south side of the lock up to the level established by KESCRG in week three, did some landscaping and started to bring coping stones back towards the walls. On the north tail wall, we extended the scaffolding up to and under the bridge and continued demolition work down to “sound mortar”, though the wall turned out to be composed of several layers and little mortar between them so that was tricky to judge.

Beyond the bridge we dug out to the end of the tail walls and finally discovered

the other end of the elusive bywash. And all without dropping hardly anything into the lock chamber, honest.

We were a small team as we were sized for a different project, but everyone pitched in to get stuff done, with bricklayers seen making their own mortar even a certain plant operator laying a brick! Being a site with limited vehicle access it was hard not to run short on materials and we all spent a fair amount of time shifting stuff about. On the upside, we were visited by various charming dogs out walking their owners.

Our assistant leader Sandra did magnificently and wrote up a report only days after the camp, but we also received a poem from one of our new volunteers, Aiden, which we’ve decided we like better, so enjoy...

Stephen ‘Ricey’ Rice

Rebuilding the counterforts (buried ‘buttresses’ strengthening the chamber walls from behind

Pictures bytStephen Rice

I travelled to the Cotswolds

My first canal camp week An unsuspecting victim

When would I find my peak?

I made it to the end I found some long lost muscle We worked our shoes and socks off We really did the hustle

The site it was impressive We were following others Repair the lock they said A band of sisters and brothers

The weather it was kind We didn’t have much rain But when the cl ay was sticky It really was a pain

‘Ricey’ was our leader He had a pleasant style “Could you just please Carry those bricks a mile?”

A ban on double handling

That was his stated aim Don’t forget our mantra: “Come on, form a chain”

And we had Sandra She works with volunteers

She didn’t really shout at us

No bleeding in our ears

She did the daily diary

Who caused all the mess Who dropped what in the lock We had to admit, confess!

Lou was our cook

She did it all alone I got the sugar rush

And gained another stone

Headphones on Rude podcast on play

Conjuring up new food

While we were out all day

The highlight was on Thursday

The board said “Chicken Thing”

It slipped down quite nicely

Along with cheesy string

And there was Ian He went into a hole

He came out black and slimy Looking like a mole

Five mile run each morning

A new concept created Breakfast pudding please A need for sugar sated

Demolition work on the north side lock tail wall

Boat trip at Bowbridge Lock and (inset) flashback to WRG restoring this lock in 2014

Inset pit by Martin Ludgate

There was RAF Martin More than just a brickie

He gave out master classes

To this poor novice thicky

Bulldoze the new brick in Squeeze the mortar out Then the wall will be true Straight strong and stout

And there was Bob (the builder) He has an electric Landy But when you want things done He certainly came in handy

He had problems with the dumper Which way to turn the key And who left the horn on? Oh heck, it must be me...

He was sitting in the pub Unfortunately in the Gents The lights were extinguished He called out through the vents

And there was David Breaking walls and digging roots

He strode across the site

In his steel capped welly boots

At the skittle alley

He stuck up every pin

This helped with his accuracy And guaranteed a win

And there was Adrian He likes it in his digger Scooping out the soil Making holes even bigger

He likes radio frequencies LTK is his handle Marine radio on a canal boat Caused his wires to tangle

And there was Rachel Like me another gofer Gofer this gofer that Can you move it closer

Her task was make a bonfire She made a blaze alright But there was so much smoke You couldn’t see the site

She brought three small boxes She was the jigsaw queen With two other players She ruled the roost supreme

They laboured long Into the early hours

A multitude of colours

Mostly poxy flowers

Then there was Phill Laying bricks his hunger

Woe betide you touched them You’d certainly know his thunder

He was always in the zone Last to leave the site

Just a few more bricks please I’ll stay out all the night

I learned about management Leaning on the fence

Looking very serious Concentration immense

The locals came looking We did copious PR Told them about the project And the progress made so far

And progress we did

It made me very proud

A lovely bunch of people I’ll shout it out aloud

I’ve got the new t-shirt

It announces W.R.G. The places that we’re visiting In the year of ’23

I’ll wear it with pride

At every pub and inn A conversation piece

To bring more interest in

The canals are precious

They give a lot of pleasure

Let’s hope new generations Appreciate at their leisure

First coping stones ready to be reinstated at the top of the completed chamber wall

navvies diary

Canals Camps cost £80 per week or as stated. Bookings for WRG Camps with number Court, Asheridge Road, Chesham HP5 2PX. Tel: 01494 783453, enquiries@wrg.org.uk

DateGroup or campDetails

Aug 18-25

CC2023-12 Cotswold Canals Camp (moved from Neath) Week 6 at John Robinson (Westfield) Lock Leaders: Paul Rodgers / Will Radice-Horne

Sep 1-5

KESCRG Cromford Canal: Beggarlee project. 5-day long weekend. Scaffolding, reinforcing, shuttering and concreting along with more pipe laying. Accom from Thursday evening through to

Sep 16-17

London WRG Wey & Arun Canal: Repairs following the major vandalism at Loxwood

Sep 16-17 wrgBITM Maidenhead Waterways: Bray Cut, removing fallen trees

Oct 7-8

Oct 7-8

Oct 20-22

London WRG Shrewsbury & Newport Canals: Shropshire

KESCRG Buckingham Arm: To be confirmed

NWPG

Working party - site To be advised: Wey & Arun or Cotswold

Oct 21-22 wrgBITM To be advised

Nov 4-5 WRG

Nov 4-5

Nov 4-5

Nov 18-19

Possible WRG Reunion ‘Bonfire Bash’ working party - venue to be confi

London WRG Supporting WRG Bonfire Bash - if it happens otherwise possible joint scrub-bash with KESCRG, venue to be advised

KESCRG Supporting WRG Bonfire Bash - if it happens otherwise possible joint scrub-bash with London WRG, venue to be adv

NWPG Working party - site to be advised: Wey & Arun or Cotswold

Nov 18-19 wrgBITM “Maidenhead Waterways: Bray Cut, removing fallen trees”

Dec 2-3

Dec 2-3

KESCRG Joint Christmas dig and party with London WRG on the Wey & Arun Ca

London WRG Joint Christmas dig and party with KESCRG on the Wey & Arun Canal

Dec 9-10 wrgBITM To be advised: Christmas Work Party

WRG and mobile groups

e.g. ‘Camp CC-202302’ should go to WRG Canal Camps, Unit 16B, First Floor, Chiltern . Diary contributions to Dave Wedd, Tel: 07816 175454, dave.wedd@wrgbitm.org.uk

ContactPhoneEmail 01494-783453 enquiries@wrg.org.uk

Ed Walker 07887-568029 ed@edwalker.eclipse.co.uk g Tuesday

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 london@wrg.org.uk

Dave Wedd 07816-175454 dave.wedd@wrgbitm.org.uk

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 london@wrg.org.uk

Ed Walker 07887-568029 ed@edwalker.eclipse.co.uk

Bill Nicholson 01844-343369 bill@nwpg.org.uk

Dave Wedd 07816-175454 dave.wedd@wrgbitm.org.uk

rmed01494-783453 enquiries@wrg.org.uk

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 london@wrg.org.uk

Ed Walker 07887-568029 ed@edwalker.eclipse.co.uk vised

Bill Nicholson 01844-343369 bill@nwpg.org.uk

Dave Wedd 07816-175454 dave.wedd@wrgbitm.org.uk

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 london@wrg.org.uk

Dave Wedd 07816-175454 dave.wedd@wrgbitm.org.uk

dig report Cromford Canal

WRG’s volunteers were called on at short notice to start work on the Friends of the Cromford Canal’s Beggarlee project to beat a planning deadline...

‘Beat the deadline’ Cromford dig WRG, FCC and friends at Beggarlee

I’m going to start this working party report with an apology, to get it out of the way. I’m afraid we slightly mis-sold this dig in the last Navvies, with an appeal for volunteers making it sound like it was an ‘all hands on deck’ call to action, wanting lots of volunteers to drop everything and head off to the top of the Erewash Canal / start of the Cromford Canal at Langley Mill where there would be loads of work for them. So my apologies if you contacted Mike Palmer offering your services, only to be told that, well, actually you weren’t needed. Because on this particular weekend, what we actually needed wasn’t a big team, but a small team over all four days, some with machinery skills plus a few mainly to be ready to ‘hold things’ when the plant drivers needed it. But that’s not to say that it wasn’t a critically important long weekend’s work, and absolutely vital that it happened when it did.

And the reason for that was down to the behind-the-scenes politics and planning that we in WRG often see mercifully little of, but which local restoration societies and trusts (in this case the Friends of the Cromford Canal - FCC) have to put a lot of effort into before we can even start work on the ground.

In particular, the work to create a brand new length of canal (see opposite for an explanation of what’s happening at Beggarlee) needed planning permission before anything could happen. Which it got, a year or more ago. But having first got the basic consent it then needed discussions with various bodies before work could start. And the fact that the worksite spans a county boundary means that this includes two county councils, plus two local councils and two wildlife trusts as well as the Canal & River Trust and Environment Agency. By the time everything was sorted, work needed to start urgently otherwise the planning permission would expire and it would have to start all over again! The work didn’t need to be completed by the deadline (just as well –it includes building two new locks, a considerable length of canal channel and an aqueduct under a bridge!) but a substantial job had to be begun that was part of the works requiring planning consent.

And that ‘substantial job’ was sorting out

Getting the manhole base in place and connected wasn’t the easiest of jobs

Pictures by Martin Ludgate

the land drainage works that were necessary before the new canal channel could be created. Two storm water drains pass under the A610 main road embankment, and until recently one of them (I’ve called it culvert ‘A’ on the map) emerged into an open channel running east-west across where the new canal will go, while any water coming down the other one (culvert ‘B’ on the map) ended up seeping through some rubble and spoil filling another open channel, situated roughly at the outside of a sharp bend which will take the new canal channel eastward and under an existing bridge under the A610. These two channels then joined together to the west side of the site, the combined waters draining into the River Erewash. They would both need to be replaced with pipe culverts buried deep enough for the new canal channel to be constructed above them. And so, having driven a WRG van up from London on the evening of Thursday 6 July, met up with seven fellow WRG volunteers at Ironville Church hall, had a drink in the associated community bar (our thanks to the Friends of the Cromford Canal for kindly putting in some beer money!) and got up early on Friday for a quick breakfast (we were expecting our cook to arrive later on Friday, so we’d get the full works breakfastwise on subsequent days) we hot-footed it to the worksite as our leader Pete Fleming started to receive phone calls warning us

that a veritable convoy of lorries was already arriving delivering building materials of all kinds.

Sure enough, we arrived on site to find trucks loaded with big concrete pipes, smaller concrete pipes, plastic pipes, manhole sections, sand and ballast queuing up to unload, which took up a fair bit of the morning. We also found several of the FCC plus a couple of volunteers from the Erewash Canal Preservation & Development Association (ECPDA) whose Langley Mill base is close by. Having got all the materials unloaded

fact file Cromford Canal

The project for the working party: Putting in pipe culverts and associated work at Beggarlee, Langley Mill, to extend existing land drainage running under the A610 road

Why? To replace existing drainage ditches with pipes laid deep enough that the new canal channel can be built above them as part of the Beggarlee Project - see next page.

Length: 14½ miles

Locks: 14

Date closed: 1900-1944

The wider picture: The Friends hope eventually to reopen the entire canal through from Langley Mill to Cromford. There are difficulties including the missing Bull Bridge Aqueduct (over the main road and railway) near Ambergate, the collapsed Butterley Tunnel and the need to work sensitively in par tnership with wildlife groups. However there is a restored length with trip-boat from Cromford to High Peak Junction, and work has been carried out at other sites includin Sawmills and the Pinxton Arm.The Beggarlee Project will open up of the southern length extending north from Langley Mill (head of the Erewash Canal and a link to the national waterways network). It will represent a major step forward towards full restoration by putting the Cromford back on the waterways map.

Cromford

Erewash Canal to the Trent

Langley Mill

Ironville

Pinxton

Butterley Tunnel

Ambergate Sawmills

Whatstandwell

Beggarlee working party site

Darren wrestles with the ‘elephant’s foot’

and stacked, it was time to start digging a hole. The main job was going to be working on the first of the two drainage culverts, the one I called culvert ‘A’ above. At the point where it emerged through a headwall into an open ditch, we were to install a manhole which would drop the culvert down deep enough so that a 600mm plastic pipe could continue it underneath where the canal channel was to be built. And so first, we needed to excavate a large enough hole that a gravel base could be laid for the base of the manhole to sit on, and to break out the existing culvert’s headwall so we could link it up to the manhole. Jobs for Adrian in the large excavator.

Meanwhile the Erewash volunteers work working on site clearance, pulling out tree stumps, a small team were clearing rubble and mud out of drain channel ‘B’, to

get rid of the water that was backing up into the culvert, and see what state it was in. Darren got rather a surprise when he crawled into the pipe culvert and met a dog coming the other way…

Finally, two of the short sections of concrete pipe that we’d had delivered to

Cromford Canal: The Beggarlee Project

The Beggarlee Project will reopen the first 1.25km of the Cromford Canal northwards from Langley Mill, terminus of the Erewash Canal. This is not an easy length to restore as it was blocked in the 1980s by the construction of the new A610 Langley Mill bypass road.

Creating a new navigable culvert to carry the restored canal through the road embankment on the original route would be prohibitively expensive and difficult, but an alternative exists in the form of a bridge which was built to carry the road over a freight railway siding which served a coal mine. The mine closed not long after the road was completed, but the unused bridge still stands and can be used to carry a diverted canal. However this is not a straightforward job, for several reasons. Firstly the siding ran east-west while the canal runs north-south, so the new channel will need two very sharp bends. Secondly the bridge wasn’t built to carry the weight of a waterway on its foundations, and thirdly it’s at an awkward height relative to the canal. The solution to these latter two issues is to build a pair of staircase locks (replacing two single locks on the original route) to raise the canal to a level such that it can then be carried through the old railway siding bridge on an ‘aqueduct’ structure suppor ted by abutments on either side of the bridge, rather than putting any of its weight on the bridge foundations.

Original canal route blocked by A610

Erewash Canal to the Trent Langley Mill

To Cromford

Site for winding hole and end of initial Begqarlee project A610

embankment

Culvert ‘B’

Culvert ‘A’

Route of old railway siding New staircase locks planned

Planned canal diversion using old railway siding bridge

Within the next few years this rail bridge will become a canal bridge

connect up to the manhole turned out to be rather longer than we’d ordered; it was too late to get replacements so a rather tedious job was cutting them in half with a bricksaw. But we got it done in time to install the short pipe sections connecting to the existing culvert, ready for the manhole base to go in. At this point my notes say “Oh dear”. I think that may refer to us unfortunately cracking one of these pipes trying to get it to fit (we’d misunderstood how far it was supposed to go in). I think there were other words used besides “Oh dear”…

Back at the hall we now had a cook (Hi George!) and he’d been to a ‘proper’ shop (Pete had found a rather strange Co-op which sold kiwi fruit and nectarines but no apples or bananas!) Lasagne was served, with enough for seconds and thirds. Fruit salad was offered; we went to the bar instead. With no deliveries expected, it wasn’t quite such an early start on Saturday. It being July 2023 the weather was cold and wet, but we got a replacement for the broken connecting pipe in after a struggle. This was followed by the gravel bed and the manhole base – which weighed 4.5 tonnes, and was even more of a struggle to get it in properly. My notes say “the time to fit it is in proportion to its weight!” Two excavators, an Acrow prop, a jack, and a fair amount of pushing, pulling and swearing were involved. A short concrete exit pipe was added, a lot of gravel followed by clay was used to infill around the manhole base and pipes, and a rather malevolent contraption known variously as a trench rammer / elephant’s foot / jumping jack was used to compact it. Meanwhile elsewhere more stumps were being pulled, and the site was looking a lot clearer. And Adrian cut himself a working platform for the next bit of excavation for the next section of culvert pipe, and in the process found another buried culvert that nobody knew about. Then it was back to the hall for jacket potatoes and a chilli that bore an uncanny resemblance to a rather spicier version of the previous night’s lasagne. HOW MUCH did he make??? And this time we did eat the fruit

salad, before an expedition up the hill to the Moulder’s Arms, a pub with interesting ale and interesting weather. We had to scoot in from the garden tables as the thunder and lightning arrived.

We were back in site at 8.30am on Sunday: it wasn’t raining (much), but it had rained for a lot of the night and site was slippery. However it wasn’t too wet for bricklaying – which was my job for the day. The steel manhole cover and the hole in the concrete manhole lid being different shapes and sizes (because that’s what was available), my job was to add three courses of brickwork stepping inwards to the correct shape. Today’s new word is CORBELLING! The good thing about this was that the brickwork could be done with the manhole lid sitting on the ground, and it could then be craned into place, rather than having to bricklay perched several feet up on top of the manhole. The less good thing was that the hired generator for the mixer for mortar

Connecting up the ‘awkward little pipe’ from the road drains

proved unreliable so I mixed most of my mortar using a shovel and wheelbarrow. And you wonder why brickies whinge…

Meanwhile the rest of the gang carried on backfilling around the manhole base, installed a temporary 300mm plastic outlet pipe (to carry away what water comes down the culvert between now and when the permanent outlet pipe is complete), and then did even more backfilling and compacting. There was also an awkward little pipe carrying water from road drains on the A610 which needed connecting in to the manhole via a series of lengths of plastic pipe and angles, and then burying too. The next two ring-shaped sections of manhole were lifted in, followed by the cover (the brickwork had already gone off), and yet more backfill went in.

There was a visit from FCC’s engineer regarding what to do to turn the existing headwall of the other culvert (Culvert ‘B’) into a chamber, and sections of the ditch that this currently exits into were dug out ready for laying concrete pipe. There will be plenty more work to do on this part of the site on subsequent working parties.

We left the site as the sky turned black again and the thunder and cold rain threatened. And speaking of cold showers, that’s what we got at the local sports club as a luxury that evening. No, that’s unfair, they were warm to start with…

George served up roast pork followed by cheesecake. And Darren went home so it was a select group at the Moulder’s.

On Monday, our final day, the last half dozen bricks were added to the manhole lid (they’d been left out because they got in the way of one of the lifting points for craning

the lid into place); the frame for the manhole cover was concreted in (yes, I mixed the concrete by hand in a wheelbarrow too – not that I’m one to complain…) and the cover fitted perfectly. Not only that but it was dead level – not bad considering the whole thing had been built 50 yards away on sloping ground.

Some final backfilling and compacting followed, then a tidy up, site fencing up, and time to leave.

Thank you to Pete for leading us, the WRG, FCC and ECPDA volunteers for their hard work, and George for cooking. We will be back there. What we did might not sound like typical canal restoration work (is there such a thing?) but it’s a vital initial stage in what is looking like being quite a big volunteer project including some interesting work over the next couple of years. We’ve already got a KESCRG / London WRG (and anyone else) extra-long weekend planned for 2-3 September and a few days either side of it – see Diary on pages 20-21. And no doubt there will be plenty more. And there will be work for more people on site as the project develops, so hopefully no more editorial apologies for mis-selling the work!

Martin Ludgate

The editor’s brickwork goes for a ride

Progress River Gipping

Our roundup of restoration progress around the country begins on East Anglia’s River Gipping with the completion of a long-running bridge project

River Gipping

Reports from the River Gipping (also known as the Stowmarket Navigation) in Navvies in the last couple of years have concentrated on progress with reinstating a footbridge carrying the towpath over the navigation near Baylham, which had been missing for a century. This work culminated in the recent official opening...

Historic 1793 Ipswich to Stowmarket Navigation Footbridge reopened after 100 years: On a glorious summer’s day on Saturday 20th May, a crowd of around 75 watched as the guest of honour, local MP Dr Dan Poulter, cut the red ribbon to declare the newly reinstated footbridge across the river Gipping at Baylham in Suffolk officially open.

The Chair of the Trust, John Warren presented Dan Poulter with a copy of the Trust’s new book about the history of the Gipping and congratulated the Trust volun-

teers. He said “The original 15 locks allowed 60ft barges to carry maritime cargoes from Ipswich docks to Stowmarket”.

The restoration has been managed by Ian Petchey who spoke about the challenges and how the original wooden bridge platform was recorded as being in a sorry state at the bottom of the river in 1942. Around 500 old bricks were recovered from the riverbed and cleaned by hand and recycled in the build with around 1,000 original 1793 bricks relaid in the abutment restoration. The installation was all done by volunteers without the help of any external contractors or additional machinery.

Dan Poulter congratulated the Trust and said how much he has always appreciated the importance of the river to his constituency. After he cut the tape the volunteers received a round of applause, three cheers and retired to the marquee for refreshment.

Ian Petchey

Visitors on the bridge on the opening day

River Gipping Trust

Progress Montgomery Canal

Following on from the reopening to Crickheath Wharf that we reported last time, SUCS volunteers are pressing on with the next length beyond

Montgomery Canal

There have been three Shropshire Union Canal Society work parties since the last update and much progress has been made, as work proceeds on the new section beyond Crickheath following the reopening of the length to Crickheath Wharf that we reported in the last issue.

Work on repairs to the former tramway wharf south of Crickheath Bridge has started. After much planning, coping stones – some weighing over half a tonne – were lifted off to allow repairs to the wall beneath. Members of the Dry Stone Walling Association (DSWA) have joined all the work parties and, by the end the first, over 8m of wall had been repaired and copings replaced – well ahead of expectations.

Whilst this section of the site had previously been cleared of scrub there remained many stumps. These ranged from the remains of small saplings, mainly on the towpath side, to two enormous alder stumps growing out of the wharf wall. After much preparatory work to loosen them these were removed and dragged out of the way. The inevitable large void was treated with grout to provide a firm foundation for rebuilding the stone wall in this area.

By June a further 24m of wharf had been repaired, ready for replacement of copings, and the hole left by removal of the ‘monster stump’ had been

almost completely closed.

A record of appreciation is due to Oswestry Rural Parish Council which provided a grant for towpath improvements in Phase 1A. The towpath here was treacherous, with mud and tree roots providing plenty of slip and trip hazards. The finished specification for the towpath won’t be delivered until works in this area are completed, but the grant provided for a level, self-draining path as an interim solution. Completed over a couple of days in May this has been greatly welcomed by all users.

In glorious weather, the June work party was somewhat overshadowed by activities for the official opening of the previous section occurring at the same time (see issue 319), but there was still time to make a start on repairs to the towpath-side wash wall south of Crickheath Bridge. The repairs use a lime mortar to a ‘recipe’ specified by the Canal & River Trust, the mixing and application of which was trialled with very pleasing results. The old hand-cranked mixer, a relic

Rebuilding of the wharf wall south end under way...

Pictures by SUCS

coveted by the British Museum, did us proud starting first time (almost).

Work on the pilot scheme is progressing well with water tests to inform the design scheduled for later this year.

July update: the Montgomery Canal restoration is moving on apace, with much progress made agreeing plans and future requirements. One of the main objectives for this year’s pilot scheme is to decide the waterproofing requirements on this section. [The formerly dry length from Maesbury to Crickheath was completely lined to prevent the leakage problems that it suffered from in the past as a result of porous ground. It’s not known how far beyond Crickheath this will need to continue, but two miles further on at Llanymynech it holds water. Hence the need for these trials.] Two sections of the channel, one 50m in length and the other 140m in length have been selected as being the most informative. The sites will be prepared to ensure they meet the minimum required depth and have stable profiles for the banks but, crucially, will not include any new waterproofing or lining. With dams at each end these will be filled with water and the water retention performance monitored. The trial will take place in early autumn and the results will contribute to the overall specification for the project.

The specification combines ecology, heritage, engineering and operational re-

quirements. The heritage requirements apply to the wharf wall and wash wall repairs south of Crickheath Bridge and have already been agreed. Work continues on the other aspects with particular attention being paid to maximising the ecological benefit and improvement, not least in the context of recent new legislation.

So, what’s happened on the ground since the last update? “Well, plenty actually” said Tom Fulda, project manager!

“A trial of the lime mortar mix specified by CRT proved successful with the results commended by CRT. This is used for repairs to the wash wall south of Crickheath Bridge and with good progress in the July work party, this job is now over 50% completed. Similarly, works to repair the tramway wharf have progressed rapidly with a combination of Society volunteers and those from the Dry Stone Walling Association contributing their expertise. A further length of copings will be replaced on the repaired wall soon and the grant award from the Association for Industrial Archaeology will help fund some of the new copings required to replace broken and crumbling ones from the original wall”.

Tom continued, “The third and final ‘wall job’ was to complete the southern end of the wharf with an elegant corner returning the wall to the bank. This was finished on the last day of the July work party in the nick of time before the heavens opened”.

...and completed

The July work party also saw the start of site preparation for the water tests which included tasks ranging from site strip, to checking the channel bed met the minimum required depth, some profiling of banks where this was required and a trail of the clay dam construction using clay salvaged from the last project. Compared with the overgrown state 12 months ago the site is already starting to resemble a canal.

Progress Lichfield Canal

Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust are making progress on two sites - Darnford Moors Ecology Park and Tamworth Road Canal Park

Lichfield Canal

The Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust continues to make significant progress, with the main focus of work (as previously) being on two key areas .

Darnford Moors Ecology Park: This is a length towards the eastern end of the canal, between the crossong of Darnford Lane (south east of Lichfield) and a point just short of Lock 30. On this section the phase 1 lining works have been almost completed; and the old Lift Bridge reached. There’s just the final tying-in of the new waterproof matting lining into the existing concrete forming the base of the Lift Bridge. Part way along this section Darnford Brook crosses the canal as a sag culvert, thereby creating an inverted siphon. Upon reaching the culvert on the opposite side of the bridge a couple of water leaks were discovered. The main leak was dealt with by means of injecting hydrophilic (water seeking) resin to where the water was entering through the piling. A smaller leak between the original matting and the culvert was dealt with by changing how the new matting was interfaced onto the culvert.

Formwork and shuttering was built on to the side of the culvert and filled with concrete, having first trapped a layer of new matting within the base.

It was then a case of continuing the matting up to the winding hole where the restored canal line deviates from the original route. The decision had previously

been made to reduce the winding hole size (from 22 metres to 15 metres) and thereby both dispose of surplus spoil but also reduce the amount of matting required - allowing the matting saved to extend the Phase 2 area contract area further towards Darnford Lane.

At the winding hole merely covering the matting with soil and gravel would not have protected it from impact damage caused by any turning boats and so the entire area has been cloaked in concrete instead.

Meanwhile the Trust’s volunteers have been disposing of any surplus soil generated by contractors Onsite and have created a grass strip and 2.4m wide path on the Phase 2 side. Many thanks to WRG and KESCRG who brought a large team in over a recent weekend, whilst the contractors weren’t working and helped carry out additional earth moving, and towpath works.

Tamworth Road (A51) / Canal Park / Cricket Lane: This is the section alongside the A51 on the outskirts of Lichfield which

Darnford Phase 1 lining almost complete, culvert in the foreground

includes the restored locks 25-26 and the original lock 24. Work continues on compensating for the need to lower the canal at old lock 24 to allow for its eventual passage under Cricket Lane (potentially end of 2024) through to a new lock to be created on the other side of the road. (This is necessary in order for a new road bridge to cross the canal with acceptable sight-lines for modern traffic, unlike the original hump-backed bridge which once stood there.)

Buttresses have now been put in place supporting the Lock Keeper’s Cottage garden and further buttresses will be required to support the cottage’s car park. In preparation for which scrub vegetation has to be cleared with the plan being to put a palisade fence up, probably around this autumn.

Work has also been ongoing on the actual canal bed at this point. Layers of compacted sandstone have made excavation difficult , necessitating

access to heavier excavation machinery and concrete mixers. Substantial quantities of rubble have been created along with significant amounts of old brick, which can be cleaned and reused (work already underway via a most helpful visit from 14 students from Tamworth College – thanks folks, much appreciated).

Once the lock keeper’s cottage side of the canal is completed then work will switch to the other wall where, in the short term , it will be necessary to create a temporary towpath some 1 metre lower than the existing one. This is likely to create more than 20,000 tonnes of rubble and the need to remove most of this off site. Overall, another very positive couple of months, marred only by an incident of petty vandalism costing some £1,500 in monetary terms and attendant time delay while our excavator was being fixed.

Andy Beck Mike Babb

The reduced Darnford winding hole with its confining layer of concrete

Pictures by LHCRT

“Substantial quantities of rubble”

Progress special

We’ve dedicated four pages to the Lapal Canal to mark the completion of a Lapal Canal Whitehouse Wharf opens

In June Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands, assisted by pupils of Tiverton Academy and Dr Andrew Hardie, Chair of the Lapal Canal Trust, formally opened Whitehouse Wharf by unveiling the new information board.

But rather unusually, despite being created by the Lapal Canal Trust as part of the Lapal Canal restoraiton, it isn’t actually on the Lapal Canal. It’s on the already navigable Worcester & Birmingham Canal.

How does that work? Well, the currently partly completed new length of the Lapal Canal running through a supermarket development at Selly Oak will join the Worcester & Birmingham Canal a little way south west of the original junction location. The site of the new junction is rather constricted with no space to widen the canal, and the restored Lapal Canal will meet the W&B at a sharp angle. This means that there will be no problem for boats approaching from Birmingham and taking a gentle right

turn into the restored canal, but those coming from the Worcester direction (unless they’re very short boats) will not have enough room to take the much sharper left turn into the Lapal Canal.

The solution to this was to build a new winding hole (turning basin) on the W&B just a few yards north east of the junction, to allow boats from Worcester to turn around and approach the junction from the easier direction. Sorted!

But rather than just build a functional turning pool, they went for something better - and more likely to attract funding.

Whitehouse Wharf is a £350k development, designed, managed and funded by the Lapal Canal Trust and more than 50 generous donors including sizeable contributions from Veolia Environmental Trust, and Unite Students (which runs a student accommodation block opposite the wharf), with the freehold held by the Canal & River Trust and Sainsbury’s (owners of the retail development) surrendering their lease rights.

Following planning approval in 2017 and the securing of the necessary funding a

The completed Whitehouse Wharf

Pictures by Lapal Canal Trust

Lapal Canal & Whitehouse Wharf

new wharf and basin that isn’t even on the Lapal Canal. Puzzled? Read on...

contract was placed with Land & Water Ltd who started work in 2022. They took off 5000 tonnes of topsoil, installed a fabric dam to keep the working area dry (the W&B Canal needed to remain open during the work) and put in sheet metal piling around the winding hole site. They then put in the reinforced concrete capping, dug out the remainder of the soil down to bed level, and installed anchor rods to secure the bank piling.

The bed was lined with 480 tonnes of traditional puddled clay, and meanwhile paths were laid and bollards installed along

the new banks. Finally the fabrid dam was removed. And as a finishing touch, LCT volunteers put in canalside benches donated by the Dulverton Trust.

So the Wharf is the essential first part of the restoration of the Dudley No 2 Canal (see ‘Fact File’ below) and as described above will enable boats to turn and enter and exit the soon to be restored section to Harborne Lane Bridge and Selly Oak Park. But it also provides Selly Oak with a new water feature at its heart. “A place to sit and relax, enjoy nature and watch the boats go by”, as LCT puts it. And all this was cel-

Lapal Canal (or Dudley No 2 Canal)

Length under restoration: 5 miles Locks: none as built Date closed: 1917 (tunnel collapsed) Canal

The Lapal Canal is the name given by canal restorers to the abandoned eastern section of the former Dudley No 2 Canal, which originally ran from a junction with the Dudley No 1 Canal at Park Head Junction via Windmill End, Gosty Hill and Coombswood to a junction with the Worcester & Birmingham Canal at Selly Oak.

Although it formed a useful shortcut for trade between these canals, it suffered from problems as a result of subsidence from coal mining, which particularly affected its two tunnels. In the case of the longer one, Lapal Tunnel (at 3470m the fourth longest canal tunnel ever built in Britain) these got so severe that after a collapse in 1917 it wasn’t repaired. Sections of canal at both ends remained in use as dead-end arms for local traffic; the western part to remains open as far as Coombswood, where Hawne Basin is home to Coombswood Canal Trust and used for moorings, but the eastern length was abandoned and filled in in 1953.

In 1990 the Lapal Canal Trust was founded, with the ultimate aim of reopening the entire through route. However the poor state of the tunnel (which in addition to having suffered collapses is reported to have been partly infilled with concrete when the M5 motorway cutting was dug in the 1960s) is seen as making restoration impracticable, so a diversion over the top of the hill with new flights of locks is proposed as an alternative, albeit not a cheap one.

Whilst full reopening as a through route remains a long-term objective, the Trust has begun by working on the easier sections at the ends, believing that both of them are worthwhile projects in their own right.In recent years, work has concentrated on the eastern section, where achievements include getting a new road bridge built for Harborne Lane, provision of a route for future reopening (and a significant amount of construction work) through the supermarket development at Selly Oak, WRGsupported volunteer work on the bridge and towpath in Selly Oak Park - and the new Whitehouse Wharf.

ebrated at the recent opening, featuring a demonstration on the water and display of boats by the Little Radford Model Boat Club, as well as Brindley Cruises providing a boat trip for pupils and teachers from Tiverton Academy

At the opening, Mayor Andy Street said: “It’s wonderful to be able to attend the unveiling of Whitehouse Wharf. I’ve long been an ardent fan of our unique patchwork of canal networks and believe they should be cherished. We’ve worked hard with our partners to restore our waterways so that local people can enjoy what is a rather special resource. I look forward to residents right across our region continuing to enjoy our canals in the months and years ahead.”

The Wharf now becomes part of the Worcester & Birmingham Canal run by the Canal & River Trust, whose Director for the West Midlands said “Whitehouse Wharf will open great opportunities for all kinds of waterbased activities and will serve to increase the vibrancy and visitor attraction in Selly Oak and wider canal network. The Canal & River Trust is pleased to work with the Lapal Canal Trust to achieve this significant milestone, and on future developments.”

LCT already works with local groups to provide boat trips between Birmingham and Selly Oak for chil-

To Birmingham

To Worcester

Original Lapal Canal junction Lapal Canal new route

Winding hole for boats to turn and enter restored Lapal Canal

Winding hole work and (below) next target, Selly Oak Park

dren, the elderly and the disabled, supported by the National Lottery Community Fund - and these trips have started using the new wharf.

And now what?

The opening of Whitehouse Wharf is just the first stage. Having demonstrated its ability to complete a major funded project, the Lapal Canal Trust now moves on to Stage 2 - restoring the initial length of canal through the recent supermarket development to Harborne Lane Bridge and on to Selly Oak Park. Much of this has already been done: a section known as the ‘undercroft’ has been built to carry the restored canal underneath some of the buildings of the retail development, and the rest of the route to Harborne Lane has been laid out as a ‘Greenway’. However a fair amount of

And on with Phase 2...

work still needs to be funded and carried outsee below.

But when complete, the canal will make Selly Oak a more attractive place to live and work, will form a feature of the park and retain historic structures - and provide attractive visitor moorings.

One of those historic structures is a rare (for the Birmingham Canal Navigations system) surviving original brick arched farm accommodation bridge. As this magazine goes to press, WRG’s volunteers are working on building paths and ramps providing access between the bridge and what will one day be the towpath of the restored canal. You’ll be able to find out how they got on in the camp report (fingers crossed!) in the next Navvies. Lapal Canal Trust (with additions by the editor)

New junction swingbridge, diversion of gas main and optical cable

The work completed on the wharf / winding hole is just the first phase of a project to reopen the canal through the retail development to Harborne Lane and into Selly Oak Park, site for the WRG Canal Camp...

Main route through supermarket site: design, excavate and remove soil, sheet pile, line channel, install towpaths both sides, relocate fence, provide bollards

Paying for it: Costs: infrastructure for ‘greenway’ through site (completed) £700,000; wharf / winding hole (completed) £350,000; main new canal route £1,230,000; swingbridge and associated services diversions £1,425,000. Total: £3,705,000

Secured so far: £700,000 of infrastructure works; £550,000 donations (inc Veolia £69,000; Hendley Trust £40,000; Garfield Weston £40,000; Landsec £48,000; Unite Students £20,000, 40 more of up to £10,000); Section 106 agreement (dependent on other funding being in place by 2026) £724,000. Still needed: £1,731,000

Progress Herefs & Gloucs

Remember the length of brand new canal channel we helped build at Malswick on last year’s Canal Camps? Well now it’s got water in it...

Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal

Following the work that the Waterway Recovery Group Canal Camps did last summer (above) to build the new canal channel and culvert works to carry streams under the canal bed, the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal Trust have continued the restoration work along the canal corridor at Malswick. They have been making good use of the training given, and have now started to add water (below)...

Progress S & N

On the Shrewsbury & Newport Canals, work continues on restoring the historic warehouses at Wappenshall Junction as a canal centre

Shrewsbury & Newport Canals

Progress has been excellent at Wappenshall Wharf, the transhipment wharf at the junction of our two canals which is being restored as a canal and community centre, since the last edition of Navvies. A great deal of effort was put in by our volunteers to get the ground floor of the smaller of the two warehouse buildings completely cleared. This was then covered with a 25mm layer of polystyrene, which is to smooth out any irregularities in the concrete floor. On top of this we put firstly a tessellated layer of 100mm thick Celotex insulation boards, followed by a second layer of 50mm thick Celotex boards laid at 90 degrees to the first layer. The whole floor was covered with a thick polythene sheet, taped together to form a completely impervious base for the floor screed. The screed will cover the underfloor heating pipework that was then installed and connected to a manifold, pump, and mixer valve. The whole system was pressurised to 5 Bar to ensure there were no leaks and left at 3 Bar whilst the screed is poured. By the time you read this the floor screed will have been poured and allowed to level itself, after which it will be left to cure for 4 weeks. The next job will be to lay the ceramic floor tiles over it and grout them in place. We can then start to do the first fix plumbing and electrics, before installing the plasterboard on the walls and fitting the kitchen and café servery. We have dug out the footings for

the stable block wall that abuts the larger Transhipment Warehouse and put in a concrete base ready to build the walls onto this using concrete building blocks. These will be clad with timber to make them look like the original stable block. We have obtained a shipping container to house all the kit in the Romney Building, to enable the latter to be disassembled and sold off. This will permit the stable block to be built. Once built, the kit will be stored here from the shipping container and the container will be sold off. As I type this, a hole is being dug to bury a 2,000 litre Calor gas tank that will provide heat and hot water via a boiler to the smaller warehouse. Once this is in place and connected, we can get the new 3-phase electricity supply connected and the communications cables pulled through the ducts we have put in. A surface water drainage plan has been submitted to Telford & Wrekin Council for agreement and this, once agreed, will be used to install the drainage in the car park area. The smaller warehouse will then have its surrounding area block paved.

Bernie Jones

Almost finished fixing the underfloor heating pipework

Bernie Jones

Progress Roundup

The Montgomery has the makings of a new bridge, the Gipping has a restored lock, and another piece of the Wey & Arun has been bought

Montgomery

We’ve reported elsewhere in this magazine on the progress that the Shropshire Union Canal Society volunteer working parties have made on the ‘Crickheath South’ projectrestoring the next length of canal beyond the newly reopened section from Gronwen Bridge to Crickheath Wharf. But meanwhile, also on this section, the contractors have been getting on with reinstating Schoolhouse Bridge, the last remaining road crossing blocking the canal between the Crickheath and the Welsh border at Llanymynech.

As you can see from the picture, the main structure of the arch is now in place.

River Gipping

Another project that we’ve covered elsewhere in this magazine is Suffolk’s River Gipping, where you’ll have read about the opening of the completed Baylham Bridge. But meanwhile the River Gipping Trust has also marked the completion of Pipps Ford Lock with the celebratory photo of the volunteers who worked on it, pictured right.

Wey & Arun Canal

The Wey & Arun Trust has acquired an important new section of the canal.

After the W&A was abandoned in 1871, as with many closed canals the land was disposed of to a large number of landowners along the route, adding to the complications of restoration. In order to reopen the canal, the Trust has had to gradually secure ownership or leases on the land as it becomes available.

The Canal Trust has now purchased another section at Gennets Farm near Loxwood, south of Gennets Bridge Lock which was restored by the Trust in 2018.

After the purchase of the Bonfire Hanger section of the canal in May this year and with a section including the lock itself that the Trust already owned, a continuous

length of about 1.5km is now in WACT ownership. This is in addition to the length of about 5km miles in the centre of Loxwood where WACT runs public trips boats and has a canal centre, and which is leased on a long-term basis.

The latest acquisition is a tribute to the work of WACT’s teams, especially the EWG (Eric Walker Group), which has transformed the Gennets Farm section in recent years and continues to open up more restoration opportunities.

Schoolhouse Bridge arch lifted into place

Completed: Pipps Ford Lock on the Gipping

Friends of the Montgomery Canal River Gipping Trust

navvies News

Good news: Lichfield

As we were going to press we heard the excellent news from the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust that Cricket Lane Bridge near Tamworth Road on the edge of Lichfield, an awkward obstacle to restoration, is to be dealt with. The original hump-backed bridge has long been demolished and the road now crosses the infilled canal at not much above the original water level. The proximity to a road junction makes a high level bridge satisfying modern road regulations impracticable. So the Trust is ‘moving a lock’ - the original Lock 24 just south of the bridge site is being converted to a ‘feature’ with no change in canal level, while a new lock on the north side of the road will replace it. Thus the canal level where it crosses the road will be lowered by enough for a new bridge to be built with acceptable sight lines for road traffic.

It has now been agreed that Persimmon Homes and Modwen will fund this bridge in connection with a housing development. Although it won’t be connected to the canal system for a while, this removes a crucial blockage to linking up the Tamworth Road and Fosseway Heath restored lengths.

Help wanted: Grantham

Grantham Canal Society is looking for volunteers for its maintenance team and also for kit to fit out its new welfare unit.

The team that maintains the Society’s trip boat, work boats and other plant needs volunteers who don’t mind working in cramped conditions, getting covered in grease, and “Fixing the impossible” - on the plus side the Society has a complete Refurbished Workshop, so that craft and plant can be maintained on a fully serviced covered slipway. Even more importantly volunteers can be supplied with cake! Contact membership@ granthamcanal.org if you can help.

Meanwhile the Trust has bought a container to fit out as a site welfare unit and is looking for good second-hand kit to fit it out. If you can help with any of the following - WC, wall mounted wash hand basin, bathroom wall cupboard, 2.5m worktop, single or

double drainer sink, 2m of Kitchen Base units, 2 x 600mm Kitchen wall units, 1200ish wide single or double-glazed window frame, internal door & frame, small fridge, under sink storage water heater 240v, IBC unit (for clean water storage), IBC unit (need not be so clean), boot scraper brush unit, wall mounter convector heater - they would be very pleased to hear from you by email to Specialprojects@granthamcanal.org

First Aid Course

We are arranging a first aid course (funded by IWA) on 30 September (and if we get enough people a second day on 1 October) at Hinton Parva (just off M4 J15). The course results in the emergency first aid qualification and also covers additional material relevant to work outdoors.

Anyone who would like to go on it should contact bungle@wrg.org.uk letting me know their name and mobile number.

George ‘Bungle’ Eycott

First Norfolk canal festival

The North Walsham & Dilham Canal Trust are restoring Norfolk’s only canal. They’re also preparing to welcome visitors to their first FREE canal festival on 9-10 September at Dilham Hall Retreats, Oak Road, Dilham NR28 9PW (by kind permission of landowner Luke Paterson). There will be taster sessions of canoeing and paddle boarding plus trips on replica wherry The Newun (pictured below) skippered by owner / creator Graham Pressman, live music, food and drink, craft stalls, exhibitors and independent produce, and a ceilidh on Saturday evening in Honing Village Hall (tickets Barry Mobbs 077497 07077).