Navvies 252

Issue No 252April-May

2012

Issue No 252April-May

2012

waterwayrecoverygroup

waterwayrecoverygroup

volunteers restoring waterwaysvolunteers restoring waterways

navviesnavvies

page 2

Visit our web site www.wrg.org.uk for

NavviesProductionEditor: Martin Ludgate, 35 Silvester Road,East Dulwich London SE22 9PB020-8693 3266 [email protected]

Subscriptions: Sue Watts, 15 Eleanor Rd.,Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 9FZ

Printing and assembly: John & TessHawkins, 4 Links Way, Croxley Green,Rickmansworth, Herts WD3 3RQ01923 448559 [email protected]

Navvies is published by Waterway RecoveryGroup, Island House, Moor Rd., CheshamHP5 1WA and is available to all interested inpromoting the restoration and conservationof inland waterways by voluntary effort inGreat Britain. Articles may be reproduced inallied magazines provided that the source isacknowledged. WRG may not agree withopinions expressed in this magazine, butencourages publication as a matter of inter-est. Nothing printed may be construed aspolicy or an official announcement unless sostated - otherwise WRG and IWA accept noliability for any matter in this magazine.

Waterway Recovery Group is part of TheInland Waterways Association, (registeredoffice: Island House, Moor Road, CheshamHP5 1WA). The Inland Waterways Associa-tion is a non-profit distributing companylimited by guarantee, registered in Englandno 612245, and registered as a charity no212342. VAT registration no 342 0715 89.

Directors of WRG: Rick Barnes, JohnBaylis, Mick Beattie, James Butler, SpencerCollins, Christopher Davey, George Eycott,Helen Gardner, John Hawkins, Judith Palmer,Michael Palmer, Jonathan Smith, Harry Watts.

ISSN: 0953-6655

© 2012 WRG David

Mille

r

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all the latest news of WRG's activities

Chairman Toolbox Talks and Kit Updates 4-5Coming soon training weekend and sum-mer Canal Camps preview Part 2 6-7Camp reports Mont and Chelmer 8-1140 interviews Chris Davey and ChrisGriffiths face the questions 12-23Diary canal camps and weekend digs 24-26Letters new lining materials and winding 27-28Progress a roundup of news fromrestoration projects around the country 29-37Dumpers safety reminder, plus changes tothe WRG authorisation categories 38-39Plant John’s still rebuilding his mixer 40-41Hollingwood Common uncovering a canalyou’re probably never heard of before 42WRGBC Latest from our own boat club 43Crick Grundy an appreciation 44Bits & Pieces restauro italiano 45Noticeboard TACHO DRIVERS READ THIS 46Infill A mission statement for WRG 47

Contributions...

...are always welcome, whether handwritten,typed, on CD, DVD or by email.

Photos welcome: digital, slides,prints. Please say if you want prints back.Digital pics are welcome as email attach-ments, preferably JPG, but if you have a lotof large files it’s best to send them on CD orDVD or to contact the editor first.

Contributions by post to the editorMartin Ludgate, 35, Silvester Road,London SE22 9PB, or by email [email protected].

Press date for issue 253: May 1st.

Subscriptions

A year's subscription (6 issues) is availablefor a minimum of £3.00 to Sue Watts, 15Eleanor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy,Manchester M21 9FZ. Cheques payable to"Waterway Recovery Group" please.

This is a minimum subscription, thateveryone can afford. Please add a donation.

ContentsIn this issue...

Left: WRG Forestry install a landing stage at the GunsMouth, where the Wey & Arun canal meets the RiverWey. Article about future volunteer work on the W&Anext time. Above: KESCRG install ladders as part of thefinishing touches at Eisey Lock, Cotswold Canals. Top:channel construction on the next length of the Hereford& Gloucester beyond Over Basin at Easter. Report nexttime. Front Cover: London WRG on the Chelmer - seeP10-11 for a report on the February camp. Back covertop: opening of Stroud Brewery Bridge, CotswoldCanals. Bottom: Inglesham - with your help at thissummer’s Cotswold camps and support for the IWAAppeal, we’ll have another opening here before too long.

David

Mille

rM

art

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ChairmanMKP channels his enthusiasm...

In which Mike Palmer tells

us about tracks and

trowels before introducing

Tech Tips, Toolbox Talks,

and Kit Updates.

Chairman’s Comment

I guess it is no surprise that WRG and its work have varied quite a lot over the years. Be-cause, although we like to feel that we pick the jobs we do, in reality we can only ever pickthe jobs from a list of what projects are available. Yes we pick the ones that we feel areimportant but, unless there is something really exceptional, it’s always from whateverprojects are currently picking up the funding and permissions.

Somehow it seems there are always ‘trends’ in this arrangement: in the early 2000s inseemed that we would only ever be doing heritage pointing and stone-work, now it seemschannel works are the big thing and our work is more ‘tracks’ and less ‘trowels’ . So for thesecond year running our Training Weekend will feature quite a lot of large excavators anddumpers.

As an aside, please don’t think that means the only work is sitting in the cab of a ma-chine all day. As our works on the Monty last year showed, channel works are now some-times so technical that for every bod in the excavator you need a dozen people capable ofother more cerebral, touchy-feely tasks. Elsewhere in this edition of Navvies you should findan article outlining what we hope to achieve at the Training Weekend, and if you fancy learn-ing some new skills (or refreshing old ones) then please come along. Alongside this we havechanged the way we categorise dumpers in our Driver Authorisation scheme – there is anarticle explaining the reasons in this edition and everybody who is authorised to drive dump-ers will be getting a letter explaining these changes. Again it is all to do with an evolution ofwhat kit is typical on our sites currently.

So to continue this theme: Revolution is easy – everybody remembers the big changes.But the small evolutionary changes thatkeep us at the top of the food chain aremore difficult to keep track of. For anorganisation such as ours, communicat-ing these changes is vital. Sometimes wefind that we think the WRG Board hasdealt with something, only to find thatthe message hasn’t percolated down to aparticular site, group or project.

This is quite understandable: forexample many people only encounter usonce or twice a year so we need toensure that any new arrangements wehave put in place are disseminated to thepeople who need to know – namely youlot reading this article. It’s at times likethis you realise just how important thismagazine is. The recent articles onstrimmers and sharpening blades havebeen well received and so we are goingto expand on this. We are still evolvinghow they are going to be presented andwhat they are going to be called butbasically there will be three types ofregular contribution.

“channel works are sometimes so technical that forevery bod in the excavator you need a dozen peoplecapable of other more cerebral, touchy-feely tasks”

Hele

n G

ard

ner

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Toolbox Talks: these are based on the standard construction industry toolbox talk butslightly modified to suit our ways of working. These are really intended to smarten up ourwork on site; they are brief reminders on the ways of working that keep us safe and improvethe work we do.

Tech Tips: These are longer in-depth articles such as the recent one from Harri W onsharpening blades.

Kit updates: these are similar to the toolbox talks. They are nice and short and just explainwhy we have made the seemingly inexplicable decision to change the number of left-handedflange-wanglers supplied in the kit from three to five.

While these may well be scattered throughout Navvies as and when space permits, it is ourintention to republish them in a standard format on the web so site leaders, van caretakers,leaders or anyone who is interested can print them out and make them available on site etc.All of this will hopefully improve the communication issue identified at the start of this piece.

And to illustrate this the rest of this page will be filled with these tips, which is notquite the same as scattering them but it does solve (a) the fact that we have made quite a lotof changes to kits and ways of working that we need to communicate before this summerand (b) it gets my word-count up!

Hugs and kissesMike Palmer

Introducing... KIT UPDATESKIT UPDATESKIT UPDATESKIT UPDATESKIT UPDATES

KIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATE we have been pondering whether to buy one of those laser surveying levelswe have been using a lot recently. It’s the same old ‘hire versus buy’ argument. It needsregular calibration and servicing and it will never be in the right place when you need it etc...The same argument also applies to other items such as gas alarms. So we concluded weshould hire this sort of kit as required. This obviously should be a job for the host society butwe accept that sometimes it’s tricky finding the right model in a local hire shop. So we haveset up an account with a national hire firm that will be managed by Jenny Black at HeadOffice. If you have a need for this sort of technical/safety kit on your weekend or Camp thencontact Jenny and, once you have convinced her your need is genuine and not just a desireto have more things that go beep on site, she can find the nearest branch and reserve it/getit delivered. Two points – we are only doing this for the technical & safety items so you stillhave to find the rest of the plant yourself, and the Camp kits will still have the good oldfashioned non-laser levels.

KIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDAAAAATETETETETE Extra PPE boxes. For the last few years we have sent out an ‘Extra PPE’ boxwith each kit containing two hard hats with visors and some goggles and ear defenders. Itwasn’t quite the right box to fit everything in and wasn’t robust enough. So this year we haveupgraded things and each kit will contain TWO boxes marked ‘Extra PPE’. Each box willcontain a hard hat with visor & ear defenders, three pairs of ear defenders, three pairs ofgoggles and a couple of spare visors. (Please keep the visors protected in the bags suppliedas they scratch easily). As with all PPE kit please keep it clean and look after it. Not only is itexpensive but you never know when you might need it.

KIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDKIT UPDAAAAATETETETETE Lifejackets. We have upped the number of lifejackets in each kit to five.

KIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATE Wheelbarrows. After a couple of years of problems with wafer thin tyres &tubes we have now upgraded them to something much more industrial but still pneumatic.Hopefully this will make things much easier on site.

KIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATEKIT UPDATE Bricksaw box. This now has an air filter hidden under the discs. This is notjust to be swapped out and the old one thrown away. The idea is that you swap them regu-larly and take the dirty one home at night and clean it. We have also added a handy littlecleaning brush for getting the dust out of all those little nooks and crannies of the saw itself.

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Coming soonCanal Camps 2012

BCN Cleanup: 22-23 April

By the time you receive this the annual trolleyfest on the Birmingham Canal Navigations mayalready be happening, but if you do reveive it in time and fancy spendng the weekendthrowing your grappling hook into Walsall’s murky waters to see what you can find, just giveAileen Butler a ring on 07703 567764 straight away.

Leader Training Day, Rowington Village Hall, Sat 12 May 10ish-4ish

The detail was in the last two issues of Navvies but basically this is a chance for regular andexperienced leaders to reflect on last year, input into improvements and share experiences,and for those who haven’t led camps before and think they might have a go to will pick upsome ideas what it’s all about. And don’t forget - it’s not just for leaders of week-long WRGcanal camps; working party organisers from the local canal societies and WRG and otherregional groups’ weekend dig organisers are also very welcome.

It’s free and lunch is included. Please book on via Jenny Black (email or telephonehead office). Any questions etc to Helen Gardner at [email protected]

WRG Training Weekend, Lichfield Canal 23-24 June

In March we asked Ali Bottomley who’s in charge of this event how it’s going. She said...March – Oh dear! June is fast approaching! Too fast for my liking! But on the up

side, this means a Training Weekend is on the horizon. As always, we are open to and in-deed would welcome suggestions as to the sort of skills you feel you or ideally a group ofvolunteers may need for projects this year. The main focus is once again on training volun-teers to use plant and machinery such as normal dumpers, rear-tipping dumpers and largeand small excavators as well as offering instruction on levels, vans and trailers.

There are no doubt many other useful skills that we could add to this list and possiblyarrange – such as catering for a camp, scaffolding, banksman, chippers, or bricklaying – soplease make your suggestions known soon and we will do our best to set something up.

A plea, as always, goes out to those of you who so readily give up your weekend tomake the training possible. If you are an instructor who has volunteered for training week-ends in the past or if you have never been persuaded but think you could offer some exper-tise, please get in touch.

Training will again take place in lovely Lichfield this year (Thank you guys!) All arewelcome, regardless of prior experience - you might want to drop in for one of the days ormake a weekend of it. Accommodation will be available from Friday night. Hope to see youthere! Don’t delay! Book on TODAY!

Bookings, suggested courses and enquiries to Ali Bottomley, telephone: 07719 643870or 0191 422 5469 and e-mail: [email protected]

Camps Preview part two

In the first part of our 2012 Canal Camps Preview we gave you details of the first part of thesummer camps programme. This time we’ve got some information on the second half. Butfirst, a few updates since last time on the leaders for the June and July camps.

For the two weeks of camps on the Mon & Brec from 30 June to 14 July we now haveMartin Danks leading the first week and Cath Coolican-Smith leading the second. Fred Towey

Have you booked for a summer canal

camp yet? If not, you’d better hurry up

if you don’t want to find they’re all

booked up. Always assuming you want

to go on one. But who wouldn’t?

page 7

and Lorraine Hughes will be leading the Manchester Bolton & Bury camp on 14-21 July, andthe KESCRG camp the same week on the Wendover Arm will be led by Steve Davis andBobby Silverwood. Finally Paul Shaw and Cameron Abercrombie will be leading the Lancas-ter Canal camp on 21-28 July with Andy Ramsay in charge of the catering.

On to the second half of the summer and on 4 August we have the start of a fortnightof camps working on the Cromford Canal. Let’s hear about it from George Rogers, wear-ing his ‘local canal society’ hat. What’s happening, George?

This time last year, I wrote that the Cromford Camp would include water, but in theend it didn’t due to late changes in the work. Well this year, it will! Leaders for the first weekare still to be confirmed, but ‘Squeezy Tom’ Rawlings and Gemma Bolton will be ensuringthat the second week is the camp of the summer, even if they don’t get the horse they keepasking me for… The work this year is to replace a side weir on the watered section in theDerwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. The existing structure has to be demolished andthen rebuilt four times bigger, so think demolition, concreting and brickwork. Eventually thiswill allow the water level to be raised and a trip boat to operate.

There will also be a chance to continue work on the Sawmills Gauging Narrows startedby WRG in 2011.

We’ve also got a couple of weeks of work planned on the Chelmer & BlackwaterNavigation starting on 28 July - see pages 11-12 for a report on the February camp and someinformation about the waterway, and we hope to tell you who the leaders are next time.

Meanwhile we’re off to the North Wales border country for three weeks of camps start-ing on 4 August. Leaders for the first week are the regular Mont team of Steve Harmes andChris Colbourne, who hand over to Martyn Worsley and Ju Davenport for week two. And thework? Over to Alan Jervis...

We’re returning to the scene of our 2011 camps, the length between Pryces Bridge andCrickheath Bridge, and a more challenging length than most of the sections which have beenrestored to date by volunteers. There are areas where the towpath has sunk very low andwhere the far bank has almost disappeared. There’s water in the canal bed in winter and it’s dryin summer – a sure sign of leakage - and in fact we believe that this section has leaked ever sinceit was constructed. Restoring it is presenting unique problems, so we’re using it as a ‘test bed’to develop methods which will, in effect, ‘write the manual’ for restorations all over thecountry. The good news is that after last year’s ‘learning experience’ we hope to make fasterprogress on lining the canal this year, especially thanks to a wonder new lining materialwhich is lighter, cheaper and easier to lay than the stuff we used last year, and remains wa-tertight even if you punch holes in it! [see letters pages ...Ed]

So you can be at the forefront of canal restoration and in the stunning Welsh borders.Where better to spend your summer?

And a couple of weeks later on 18 August we’ve got the start of a fortnight of campson the Chesterfield. Let’s hear from George Rogers again, but this time wearing a differenthat - as camp leader...

Chesterfield this summer will return to the site of our successes last summer, StaveleyTown Lock. Last year we built the upper wing walls, and they are now largely hidden behindthe clay dam that is holding back the water of Staveley Town Basin. In order that the watercan be let through to the next section, we are now going to start building the lock itself. Thiswill most likely be brick facing a concrete wall, so we should see hopefully see some rapidprogress during the camps. Week 1 will see me leading and ‘Vulcan Dave’ Bradford assisting,and then in week 2 I reverse roles as Steve Baylis comes in to lead the final hurrah of thesummer. Should be a brilliant fortnight, so if you can come for any of it we’ll be happy tohave you there, and no doubt we’ll line up some evening entertainment for your delectation– even if I have to drink a lot of Coke to provide it!!’

That’s all for this time - but you might have spotted that one site hasn’t had a mentionyet. Yes, the Cotswold Canals project at Inglesham, funded by the IWA Inglesham LockAppeal. We’ll be bringing you the latest on the three weeks of work planned for this impor-tant site in Part Three of our Camps Preview next time.

For all week-long camps unless otherwise stated, you should book via HeadOffice using the form in the Camps brochure mailed with Navvies 250, or online atwww.wrg.org.uk. Canal Camps enquiries: 01494 783453 or [email protected]

page 8

“In between plumbing jobs,

Bungle managed not to set

fire to the band hall whilst

caramelising the top of the

bread-and-butter pudding...”

Camp reportMontgomery Canal

New Year on the Mont…..

The main camp arrived on Boxing Day after-noon at Porth y Waen Silver Band Hall – ouraccommodation for the week. The kit wasunpacked and everyone settled in the accom-modation. After dinner a reconnaissancesquad ventured across the road to the LimeKiln pub. The reports came back favourable:under new management; likely to stay openpast 7pm; and New Year’s Eve opening timesstated to be “12pm until you lot go home”!

First morning on site was a slow start.Getting used to the British Waterways siterequirements took a while, although thank-fully we had several people who had been onthe summer camps who already knew theroutine of building the required welfarecentre, including unloading 22 chairs into afield. Our work for the week was a scrubbash on the section of canal south of Crick-heath Wharf towards School Bridge to enablesurveys to take place before the forthcomingsummer camps. The sites for the bonfireswhere chosen away from the badger settsand local properties.

Today, being a bankholiday, chainsaw Ianand chainsaw Paul usedtheir ‘silent’ saws. AlanLines trained Derrick andAndy on the brushcutter.Mary and I carried outthe leaflet drop to thehouses surrounding thesite to explain the workthat would be carried outduring the week. Garyhad the first of manypress interviews with theShropshire Star who senta journalist to site.

Back at the accom-modation, chef Bunglehad been left with a fewjobs: (1) fixing the poorexcuse for showers (2)unblocking the drains

and (3) mending the trailer lights. Oh, andcooking the dinner of course. When we wereback from site we installed the high-techshower-availability gender-specific signallingsystem whilst Bungle and Adrian gainedaccess, via the ladies toilets, to the area wherethey could install a shower pump, only to finda pump already existed but just didn’t work.In between plumbing jobs, Bungle managednot to set fire to the band hall whilst cara-melising the top of the bread and butterpudding in his traditional manner, using theblow-torch lance. [See photo in last issue ...Ed]

Due to the unusual occurrence of therebeing three radio amateurs (anoraks) on thesame camp, we were able to set up a radiolink between site and the accommodation,thereby resolving the problem of having nomobile phone signal at the accommodationhall. Here is Bungle’s explanation...

By utilising a 2m/70cm cross-bandrepeater, positioned on a handy mobile 12 vpower supply with sufficiently large enoughground plane properties (i.e. minibusKX07FEH), we were able to establish a radio

Keeping one of several bonfires on site fed

Mart

in L

udgate

page 9

communications link between the two sites,despite the limitations of the terrain. (Melsays “that’s Bungle’s technical conversationfor the day!”)

We came back from site to luxuryshowers as the pump had now been fixed byBungle. So strong was the water pressurethat when you pressed the middle showerbutton, the water came shooting out of theend shower head all over Paul’s pile of cleandry clothes (and Gary’s!) Wednesday was L-Day or Lasagne Day for Bungle as he had toslay the ghost of ‘lasagne soup past’ - whichhe did successfully. Fresh volunteers arrivedin the forms of Bush, Daddy Cool and Lynda.

Thursday was a busy day on site. Anexcavator had been hired for the backfillingof the stone wall at the wharf. Adrian wastasked with the job and Colin was trained upon excavators in the process. The forestryteam of Paul, Alan, Ian and Mary, very pro-fessionally felled their biggest tree of theweek, generating loads more logs for thelocals to collect. By this stage we were up tofour controlled bonfires ably managed byColin & Tina, Helen, Martin and George; withJohn and Pete tirforing out themasses of stumps left in the wake ofBen, Derek and Andy who werejungle bashing towards the road,despite the 70 year old thicket andpiles of fly-tipped rubbish. Afterbangers and mash for tea, two vansof campers made their way toWrexham for the bowling alley &cinema complex.

Friday began with an unprec-edented occurrence… John the Hawkwas the last one up! Gary and Benwere filmed (watch them onYouTube). We were given toffeesand chocolates by a friendly localwho had spent most of the weektrudging up and down the towpathcollecting logs. We had a final col-lective push to complete the sectionabove the road. Friday evening wasspent watching Snatch or in the pub.

Saturday morning on site webegan clearing the section below theroad. AJ led a walk back to the siteof the summer camps so that volun-teers could see what had beenachieved since they had left. Wereturned to the accommodation,where Bungle and AJ were preparingour lovely New Year’s Eve roast

dinner. What happens when you leave aradio engineer and University lecturer incharge of a roast dinner? Well, you end upwith cooking thermometer, 10 minute inter-val reading, an Excel spreadsheet and atemperature curve graph.

After dinner, Viv and Jason returnedunexpectedly after realising that a night in atent on a cold windswept mountain was aless attractive option than coming back to theaccommodation for the cheese board. Martinentertained us with a quiz on 2011 where Idiscovered that I was oblivious to the factthat Jimmy Savile had died. Most of thecamp then adjourned across the road to thepub to see in the New Year.

All in all we did loads of scrub clear-ance, lots of tree-felling and created piles oflogs for the locals. We did some training onvans, excavators and brushcutting. We madean IWA video and appeared in the Shrop-shire Star. We entertained some local Trust &IWA visitors and we managed to improve theaccommodation. All in all, a fine effort by allthe team, many thanks!

Mel Parker

Tirforing one of many stumps out

Mart

in L

udgate

page 10

Chelmer & Blackwater campor

‘The Only Way Is Essex in thesnow to the Yellow Chip Road’

Saturday dawned very brightly for me inShropshire and for James Butler in North-amptonshire as we set out to Maldon Essexfor the first camp of the year. Essex provedto be a different scenario with cleared roadsbut every where else covered in a layer of 4-6 inches of compacted snow and ice.

The crew consisted of eight DoErs aged19: two aspiring Queen’s Scouts and fourmature local government employees, two ofwhom had previous experience. The week’stask was pure scrub bashing to restore thetowpath to its original width of 2-2.5metresfrom its current 600 mm muddy, ruttedtrackway, with bankside clearance from EssexWaterways Ltd’s two small workboats on theoffside. Unfortunately the workboats werenot available due to being frozen in atHeybridge Basin...

The idea wasto work back east-wards fromRicketts Lock to-ward Beeleighwhere we finishedlast October.

Sunday sawus on site with the2 resident EWLworkers Michaeland Bob, and workbegan on a purelymanual basis withno machinery inuse. A fire waseventually lit; verydifficult when mostof the kindling islocked in ice.

The fire hadstayed in overnightso Monday saw uswith a full comple-

ment of crew with the last four memberswho had braved the elements to get fromMiddlesborough and Teesside viaScarborough to be with us. Monday alsobrought all the EWL portable machinery tobreak up the monotony of slashing andraking. We got as far as we could eastwardswhen we reached the point that the localauthority tree preservation officer wantedsome changes made to the towpath bankwhich could only be achieved from the boats,which were still not available.

So from Tuesday onward it was west-ward from Ricketts Lock, purely on the tow-path side, which had a great many more selfset trees: Willow, Hawthorn, Oak, Alder andAsh, plus acres of bankside reeds andrushes.This brought Michael and Bob intotheir element with chainsaws and the mightyTimberwolf machine chipping like theclappers.

Other jobs were completed aroundRicketts Lock with the removal of soil and

“Unfortunately the workboats

were not available due to being

frozen in at Heybridge”

- Alan Wiffen reports from a

chilly first canal camp of 2012

Camp reportChelmer & Blackwater

Feeding scrub to the chipper

Jenny B

lack

page 11

turf caused by land surge, being removedfrom the lock coping stones and re-used tomake good a trip hazard in front of thecanoe portage platform and the groovecreated by boaters when opening the lockgates. A large area of wildlife habitat wasextended in front of the lock with more logsput in for the Bees, Butterflies and Bugs tolive in.

The weather was improving daily withconsequent snow melt which sent the riverlevel not only very high but also very fast.This precluded any thoughts of using theboats as they were not powerful enough tocombat the race.

Thursday and Friday saw EWL fell anenormous willow and loads of growth fromacross the towpath, all of which was chippedready to be utilised making a completely newfootpath about 1m wide - hence the titleYellow Chip Road.

Altogether the team completely clearednearly half a mile of towpath and laid thenew foot path, which was a great achieve-ment especially considering their youth andinexperience, and a pleasure to lead.

Alan Wiffen

Jenny B

lack

Another pitchfork load heads for the fire

Chelmer &BlackwaterNavigation

Springfield Basin,Chelmsford toHeybridge Basinnear Maldon:14 miles 12 locks

The Chelmer & Blackwater is a river navigation based mainlyon the River Chelmer. It was opened in 1797 from Chelms-ford to the Blackwater Estuary, an inlet from the Essex coast.Used for carrying freight until the early 1970s, the waterwayescaped nationalisation and continued to be run by the origi-nal private company until it became insolvent in 2003. Toavoid the waterway closing down, it was taken over by EssexWaterways, a subsidiary of WRG’s parent body the InlandWaterways Association, which has been working since thento return it from its run-down state to a good condition andmaintain it, using a very small permanent staff supported bya great deal of volunteer help - including Canal Camps.

There will be more canal camps on the Chelmer & Blackwateron 28 Jul - 4 Aug, 4-11 Aug and 27 Oct - 3 Nov.All volunteers welcome!

page 12

WRG at 40Forty views for forty years

“One of the best things I’ve ever seen:

that embankment go, and Woolsthorpe

Flight become a flight again and not

two separated sections”

– Chris Davey

40 Views for 40 Years

The 13th in a series of articles to celebrate WRG’s 40th(-ish) birthday by capturing the viewsof people who have been involved in various capacities.

Off into the Pennines to locate Chris Davey: long standing board member, founder andorganiser of the original BCN Marathon Challenge, and mad keen on... err... sewage.Between them Chris and his wife Helen have been very involvedin WRG over a number of years.

Q: How and when did you first get involved with WRG?A: My interest in canals started in the mid ’70s: my big brother went offon a canal holiday and came back saying how wonderful it was. When Igot round to doing my O-levels I did my O-level project on British canalsand that led me into looking at other things other than just boating. My firstboating holiday was just after my kid brother died; we all went off on aholiday and it was wonderful fun; that was ’79. I then went off on otherholidays in ’79 boating-wise.

I then went off to Trent Polytechnic in 1980 and thought “canalrestoration might be a bit fun” as a change from boating to actually restoringthe damn things. I made contact with the Grantham Canal RestorationSociety who’d just started digging out the canal arm in the centre of Not-tingham (that runs into the former Fellows, Morton & Clayton Warehouse – that’s now a pub). Part of thedigging was being done by a YTS [Youth Training Scheme] equivalent scheme. In a week’s work they werejust about filling one six cubic yard skip. On a Sunday afternoon we were filling two. I was staying at thehalls, at Trent Poly, in Nottingham and everybody knew when I had been down to do that digging; it was thesmelliest mud ever. It makes Elsecar mud look ‘not smelly’. Even after two baths you still stank of the stuff –it was revolting. That was really my very first experience of really getting mucky in a canal. It was great fun, Ienjoyed it, the people were nice.

I then decided it might be quite nice to go off with some of these other people I’d heard about throughthe IWA – this group called “double-you ahhr gee” – “werg”. I attempted to join WRG but it was at a timewhen there was a slight hiatus in the production of Navvies because Graham Palmer (‘Piggy’) had stoppeddoing it due to his illness and this new chap called Alan Jervis hadn’t really got production of Navvies going.

There was a long period (from memory it was about 12 months but it probably wasn’t) when there wasno information coming out and eventually I went out with this group who were doing something on this canalin Stratford – a group called WRG North-West. I had to meet them in a pub which seemed to be a goodidea to me but I was a bit nervous. I can remember being really nervous about going to this pub and stayingfor the weekend with people I’d never met before. I think it was the One Elm near St Gregory’s – St Grot’sChurch Hall. I got there earlyish and other people started to troop in and I realised they were the people Iwas supposed to be meeting. They were talking about canals and restoration and it was really interesting.And they were NICE people. They weren’t a bunch of weirdoes which is what I’d sort of been led tobelieve. They were people like John Foley, Malcolm and Gaynor Asquith, Malcolm Bridge – they werereally friendly. And Pete Stockdale – all the gang of that era. We had a fantastic weekend and I loved it. SoI kept going back and back and back and got more and more involved with the organisation over the follow-ing years. Dates of when I first started going out with north-west? – I guess I could look it up in my diary butI’ve no idea, it would be somewhere around ’81 / ’82.

Combined with the fact that I was on a sandwich course and I had my first work experience withPlessey the electronics company. My second one was going to be with two different companies the second

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of which was British Waterways in the training section. But the first company went into receivership so Imanaged to negotiate a six month arrangement with BW. I was spending my working days with BW and myweekends navvying. It was fun – it was very different. I’m not quite sure how some of the people at BW goton with someone who was interested in canals; but there were some people outside [BW Head Office]Willow Grange who worked for BW who loved it – born and bred on the boats. Especially on my secondstint when I was at BW, I got to know some of them extremely well and they took me all over the place toplaces where you wouldn’t normally get to go because they knew I was interested. It was just wonderful,including daft things like clearing out the feeder that goes along the top of the New Main Line – right at thevery top of that embankment (well... cutting), there is a feeder: part culverted, part not. No boater everknows it’s there. But we went out because we had an APCO scheme working on it and we had to keepliaising with them – it was just fantastic some of things we were able to do. That’s where it developed from,having those twin streams of boating, working with BW and also the restoration.

Q: Working with North-West – what other sites did you go on? Was it just with North-West?Q: No - I went down and did some work on the ‘Waste and Arid’ one weekend with people like JohnWard and John Wood. Didn’t impress me greatly, that first trip, because we spent the entire weekend cuttingdown stinging nettles which I thought was a fairly tedious and unnecessary.

Obviously I’ve been out with the Grantham people. That was difficult because in those days BritishWaterways had just about managed to stop all volunteer work on nationalised canals. Which is why theGrantham society were digging in Nottingham and WRG North West were on the southern Stratford. Therewas a lot of work on the southern Stratford because that’s when it was National Trust owned and everywinter there was a programme of clearing the locks.

Then we moved onto things like the Huddersfield Narrow with various work camps up there. Pock-lington Top Lock we went and did some work on with North West. That’s where I discovered that in theVale of York it hails sideways. When the wind blows and it’s hailing, Pocklington Top Lock is not the placeto be standing. Nowhere to hide.

But it would have been a lot with North West. I was travelling a lot and there were several otherpeople who went out with North West who were also travelling a lot: people like Soo Duffin who lived downin Surrey, S – O – O for Soo. Mike Palmer nicked her jumper with the word ‘Soo’ on it. There were otherpeople around and we got chatting. London WRG were doing very well, there was WRG NW, East Mid-lands. There had been WRG Cosmo (WRG Cosmopolitan) and that was people like Jane and CarolineDorey, neither of them now have that surname. A number of other people had been Cosmo and for about 18months I was responsible for looking after Cosmo Bear - a little teddy bear mascot.

Cosmo had sort of died and we needed something else. There was a discussion in the back of one of thevans and we decided to form a new group, it was going to be between North West and London WRG so it wassort of going to be the bit in the middle. I do remember that we all fell about laughing when somebody, and I cannotremember who, worked out if we were between London and North West WRG and to the west of East Midlandsthat would actually make John Baylis the bit-on-the-side. The alcohol may have helped. So we set BITM up - itwas difficult in the early days because we were gathering people from all over the country. I ran that for a while.

Q: Grantham was where you started – what was your relationship with the canal society?A: I was a director of the Canal Society pretty quickly because we needed some. Membership wasdecreasing because we couldn’t work on it; BW weren’t spending any money on it. The lock at Trent Bridgehad been restored in the early 70s but then the road had been put across the canal which made it impossibleto use that end of it. We were just trying to keep the society going, I was a director for quite a few years.One of our biggest problems was the Woolsthorpe railway embankment. We kept trying to get agreementbetween BW and British Railways Board as to who was for responsible for it so we could get rid of it. Thisliterally went on for a decade. In the end we had to give an undertaking that we would pay for the reinstate-ment of the railway bridge if the railway line was ever restored and eventually there was a canal camp whichgot rid of this enormous embankment. That was one of the best things I’ve ever seen – that whole embank-ment go and actually Woolsthorpe Flight become a flight again and not two separated sections. The stupidityof the whole thing which I think is absolutely typical of a lot of canal restoration.

A lot of the work on the Grantham in the early days was things like putting in Denton slipway at DentonWharf, because there wasn’t much more we could do – it was a nationalised waterway, you couldn’t touchthe structure.

But [all] that gave me my nickname in the end and I’m quite happy – still happy to be known as‘Grantham Chris’ by some of the, shall we say, older people who are still around.

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Q: The Wilts and Berks Big Dig 1991?A: Yeah - that was an important thing. That was an amazing event. We’d started working with PeterSmith as WRG BITM and we went down to places like Calne and did some work around the bridge there.I’ve still got my bright yellow first edition Wilts & Berks sweatshirt which I still wear – especially when I’mboating. As a silly aside it actually got me and Helen free into a French museum that’s twinned with the Wiltsand Berks. The fact that I was wearing this t-shirt the owner and manager was soooo delighted to find someBrits who even knew where it was, let alone had the t-shirt, he let us in for free.

The Big Dig was set up to celebrate a number of different activities really; WRG was 21 years old officially in’91. It took a lot of planning, Mike and I between us did most of the planning. It was the first time I’ve ever seenPalmerette in a suit. We had to go to a meeting and we both had suits on because we had to be official with thecouncil and the school. Very weird seeing Mike in a suit, he must have equally thought the same about me...

We had over a thousand people for a weekend. I spent more money that weekend on a single shopthan I’ve ever spent in my life. Figures were daft: 1700 pints of milk, 200 pints of whipping cream, the cakewas 8ft by 6ft - we were eating that for the whole week afterwards trying to finish it up. That was one of themost impressive things I think WRG has ever done. Helen, though, doesn’t like the colour purple. JohnHawkins, WRG print, printed the booking forms on purple paper. We had literally a thousand of themdropping through the letterbox. We had to deal with a thousand booking forms, assign people to one of thethree schools we were using in Wantage.

It was fantastic to see people, we even got the local MP down to do some work: Tony Baldry. SueBurchett’s the only person I’ve ever known to get some real work out of an MP: he brought his plate back(he ate dinner with us) just as Sue shouted ‘washers-up wanted’. Tony put his plate down and Sue handedhim a tea towel. He came and carried on and did some of the drying up.

We set fire to the bottom of the canal. Our jungle bash fires were so good that the bottom of canalwhere it was dry was a bit peaty and it set fire to it – they were burning about a week afterwards – that was abit of a problem.

We got, if I remember, four out of the original six IWA London and Home Counties Working Partygroup – the forerunner to WRG – that went on that very first away dig back in the ’60s came to that event.To get 4 out of 6 was really quite something.

There is the video, there is the Arthur Dungate slide video as well. They’re really good as memories ofwhat went on. It’s nice occasionally to look back and see (a) how young we all looked but also (b) what wedid. To take this canal that didn’t really exist, and proving that it did exist and proving that WRG could turnout so many people. I think it was 1017 the final count - there has never been a bigger Big Dig.

Q: Did you ‘do’ canal camps?A: I did a lot of canal camps, both as a volunteer and running them. Some of the early ones I went onewould have been in the mid ’80s, things like working on the Basingstoke. Nominally KESCRG run, stayingin places like the old bakery. We really took off with a lot of those things in the mid ’80s. We ended upvolunteering to do some of the site and services work at the 1987 Hawkesbury National. That was a very difficultperiod in many respects and it was a difficult event because we were all new at that game. We didn’t get very goodaccommodation – we hadn’t got the experience and it was part of the learning curve. The locals had booked afootball club which we nicknamed the Ponderosa, it was inhabited by some fairly disruptive youth - we had to lockthe building even when we were in it. I do remember Jane Dorey (Lee as she now is) was very kind to the youthsand made them a lovely chocolate cake with Ex-lax chocolate. We ended up moving onto site into a marquee, wedidn’t have proper water, showers and we definitely didn’t have proper toilets. We ended up with bucket-and-chuckit toilets which the ruddy company emptied behind our marquee.

That was probably the first time we made a real impact at Nationals. The big problem and the thingthat made the real difference for WRG at Nationals (and I think taught us a lot about how to run everything)was the fact the scaffolding company had built a rolling scaffolding bridge to roll across the narrows (not thelock, the old stop lock) to get across to the other side. This thing was absolutely impossible to manoeuvre.We were supposed to wheel it across on its wheels on scaffolding planks laid across the 7ft width of the lockchamber. A group of us could hardly move it let alone wheel it in a straight line. We had BBC televisionfilming that night on the Friday night, a programme I think called Transit, from the festival site. It was greatpublicity for the festival but we couldn’t do a damn thing about the bridge until they’d finished filming.

At 8 o’clock at night we’d agreed with Brian Saunders and the rest of the management that we woulddisassemble this ‘thing’ and build a cantilevered version that would stay on one side of the lock and not haveto be wheeled across. We worked like slaves – we’d never built one before. But that’s the great thing aboutWRG – take a bunch of highly intelligent people, give them a set of parts, give them some scaff spanners and

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say ‘redesign it’. I got dragged back to my bed about 2 o’clock, I was camp leader, Mitch (Michelle Gozna)who was my gopher persuaded me that since I had to be up at 6 o’clock in the morning that it was really,really, really time that I got some shut eye. We finished the work about 4 - it had taken about 8 hours in thesemi dark. It was a tremendous thing to actually have taken something that this scaffolding company had built thatwas unusable and built something else that was usable. We were shattered but it saved the whole event – there’sno way people would have been able to get from one side of the festival site to the other without that bridge.

We got given a beautiful icing narrow boat cake as an award and that spent a number of years living atEllesmere Port boat museum on display as our trophy. I suspect after 5 or 6 years the icing started to breakup. There were some great people on that camp; some brilliant first timers as well. I think that was one ofthings that WRG did with IWA and with the boaters to make people feel very good about WRG. We’dalways been the slightly revolutionary arm of IWA but you were either in WRG in those days or IWA andnever the twain shall meet. From that we went on to organise other rallies.

Hawkesbury - I do remember when the guy came to pick up the trackway, I’d gone out with a group –nearly all the workforce on the second week were girls. The guy from the track way just did not believe thatme and this group of girls would load his vehicle. Well we soon showed him, didn’t we!!

’86 was Brentford - that was when we got the Case Uni-Loader. The funny thing about ’87Hawkesbury was I had actually been banned from all rally sites in 1986. We had got instruction from IWAhead office (Chairman Ken Goodwin) that we were going to take the Case Uni-Loader to Brentford rally toshow it off: the first time we’d ever had new kit like that donated. I remember that there were two rallies thatyear – there was Brentford and a protest rally at Northwich. IWA didn’t really want to play with theNorthwich rally. I went up to John Palmer’s house by train on the Friday night, he drove me over to the Montwhere the Case was being used (in the Beavertail we’d hired). We got up at something like 4 o’clock in the morn-ing to drive to Brentford with the Case on the back of it. We knew roughly were Brentford was but we didn’tknow how to get into the site. We eventually arrived just after 10 o’clock – the director turned round andsaid go away – you’re late. We said “we’re going to park it here – we’re going to find people”. We wentonto site and found people like John Baylis, Ken Goodwin and Alan Jervis and we were marched onto siteand at that point I was permanently banned from any rally for the rest of my life. One of my greatest achieve-ments.

’88 Castlefield – that was fun living in the railway arches. We had the 3 railway arches which are nowunder the Manchester tram network. IWA people were still a bit strange in those days and we had a call“please could Chris come over – we’ve found something [pause] ‘unpleasant’.” Oh – what have they found?A dead body? A dead animal? No – there was just a pile of excrement in a corner. But nobody in IWAcould go anywhere near it. AJ and spent half of that rally going to the local plastics firm because we neededloads and loads of more plumbing, because they had so many boats we didn’t have enough water pipe. Wewould walk in there and they would go “Not again!” We learnt a lot, people like Steve Champion (IWANottingham) were great because he was a plumber and he was teaching us an awful lot of things about howto put pipes in with non return valves and all the regulations.

Because I worked for a waste disposal company and was used to tankers I ended up not only camp leaderbut also acting tanker manager. We persuaded, somehow, the Manchester City Council drivers to leave theirtanker on site because they didn’t really know how to operate it and I did – we were emptying the loos ourselves.That came about after they’d managed to have an argument between the three crew members: driver nevertouched the equipment; operator whodidn’t do the hard work and couldn’tdrive but he was the guy who turned thevalves on and off; and loader. Theymanaged to try and pump the contentsof the tanker down one of the manholes– you don’t – you let it gravity discharge– they tried (against my advice). Puts iton blow and this stuff comes out thepipe straight down the manhole, straightacross and straight up again...

’89 was the first Waltham Abbeysite. That was a bit of problem for mebecause although I was designatedleader it ended up being a KESCRGcamp – I still don’t know how – there “Fun in the railway arches”: the 1988 Castlefield ‘National’

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was all sorts of difficult politics with it. I disappeared off and played Lavender Boat full-time so I was quitehappy with that. Working in the industry, that was some of the cleaner stuff we were dealing with.

’90 was Gloucester – that was a more interesting year. Around about Waltham Abbey time I’d met a younglady called Helen Davis - we decided to get married pretty promptly. The only problem for getting married - Helenhad just started her job as a teacher and the first time she could take holiday was the end of the summer term.When it comes to organising a honeymoon, when you’re already the camp leader for Gloucester canal camp fortwo weeks and that’s your two weeks holiday it does make it tricky. We had a few days in the Yorkshire Dales(where we live now) and the rest of our honeymoon was spent on the canal camp.

I’m desperately trying to think where it was in ’91 – was it Netherton? ’91 must have been the year ofthe Falkirk Festival as well. By that time we’d started doing daft things like going out on camp site visitsbefore we had camps.

Wakefield was the mud festival. My abiding image of that was a visitor: a lady in a white and whitehigh heels trying to cross the festival site without getting muddy.

We managed a few festivals and then other people were leading them and I was quite happy to take onthe job of running the Lavender Boat with a great team – had to do some training on some of them: SteveMorley learned not to hug bottom sections of porta pottis as he was stepping across from the bank to theboat. The valves occasionally leak – Steve discovered how badly they leaked one time. We only everdropped one cap off a porta porti into a tank – but we did get it back and the following year we gave it backto the boat owner in a great ceremony. I’m very glad Elaine Scott is still doing it, when she came on boardshe was a great help and someone else who was from the industry: she’s a sewage design consultant. Weused to fight over real bucket-and-chuckits because they were so easy and fun.

I carried on with that through till Huddersfield 2002 which was the last one I did. That’s when I startedmy commute Monday-Friday from North Yorkshire down to Banbury – doing weekend work at that pointwas absolutely impossible. Do I miss doing them? I think the answer is ‘no’ because I’m boating eachsummer in France!

I took over from ‘Windy’ (John Gale) as company secretary of WRG in ’95 when he wanted to retirefrom 114 where he lived in his broom cupboard (where he did all his WRG stuff as well as his IWA). Thatgave me a chance to step down from waterways festivals; I resigned as director to become company secre-tary. That was basically a full time job for WRG – doing the minutes and all the other stuff. I would havegiven that up in the early noughties and that was handed back to 114. That was fun – doing the minutes ofWRG meetings – especially the ones in wonderful places like the boardroom at Pebble Mill.

Q: The BCN Marathon Challenge?A: Ah yes – we did ten years of that. That started when Alan Jervis, Helen and I were boating down theGrand Union and we were chatting away to one of the BW lock keepers and we were running fairly late ofan evening and he was saying “you won’t be able to do this for much longer”. We said “why not?” He said“I understand we’re going to stop boating after dusk and before dawn”. And we said “but that’s a statutoryright” and he said “I know, but nobody’s done it so the gaffers reckon they can get rid of it”. So we thought“blow this for a game of soldiers. We WILL cruise through the night, we WILL set up an event”. We all lovethe BCN and we can have people cruising throughout the night on the BCN and we can prove that it hap-pened so they can’t take the right away.

I went out to Jamaica to work for 3 months in the latter part of ’92 and I sat on my hotel balcony inKingston writing the original set of rules. Partly based on the old IWA Silver Sword scheme; the idea thatthere were easy canals (BCN Mainline), there were less used canals (Stourbridge) and totally under usedcanals (the Curly Wyrley). It originally fitted on 4 sides of A4. It worked well; we had 24 hours of cruising in24 hours. We started at 11 o’clock on the Saturday morning and finished at 11 o’clock on the Sunday. I doremember how flipping cold the canals are in the middle of the night. It was June, nearest weekend to longestday. We were doing it in our inflatable dingy – the three of us. We were going out somewhere round theWalsall at 4 o’clock in the morning, dawn was just coming and we were just frozen solid. We finished up atCannock and we were shattered.

After that we said we are not having 24 hour cruising in 24 anymore, we’ll have 24 hour cruising in 30 justto get a break but we knew people would keep cruising through the night. I had to rewrite the rules becausepeople had found lots of bits of canal I’d never heard of. Helen and I did all of the work on that event for nine ofthe ten years with the sole exception of AJ who produced the booklet. That was an amazing event, we stopped inthe end because we were at the height of the event: all three of us are great believers that you don’t stop an eventwhen it’s on the downhill slope – so that people remember it fondly. We made wonderful friends, people like theWilderness Boat Owners Club – the ‘wildebeest’ as we got to call them as they went round in flocks.

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That – the BCN – also partly came about because when I was working for BW one of the managerswas Les Pine, he knew I loved the BCN. At the end of my time he gave a book: the tolls and the distancemaps of the BCN. Every section, every lock, every basin, so they could work out the distances - it’s inmiles, furlongs and links. I had accurate, detailed distances on the BCN and we were able to work out all ofour scoring down to individual links (a thousandth of a furlong – a link is about 7.5 inches). Having thatinformation made it so easy - Helen and I would sit there for weeks as the logs came in and we would workout all of this on a computer.

Unfortunately Les subsequently died (and Pinewall Ave is named after him and one of the other engi-neers, at Kings Norton). I’m trying to think of the Christian name of the chap ‘Wall’. Great man – told mesome great stories. He grew up at Zouch on the Soar, as kids he and his brother used to go out to the weirsand fish out the dead bodies. They got sixpence from the coroner for every dead body.

I’m very proud to have been associated with such a successful event, but it wouldn’t have happened ifit hadn’t been for the willingness of the boaters to do really, really stupid things: go up arms they knew theywere going to get stuck on. They would nudge in to any arm, branch, basin they’d ever seen. A great event.

Q: What’s the most useful skill you’ve learnt and who taught it to you?A: It could range from watching Bob Dewey manage to get his jack hammer stuck in the side of a lock atDiggle and then trying to dig it out with another that also gets stuck – so learning never get your jack hammerstuck – to driving the beavertails with JP (John Palmer); that was always good because I’d never drivenanything that big. (Despite the fact I was a transport manager - I never got to drive the trucks). That wasgreat fun going out with John and driving those around the country in the mid ’80s. Loved doing that. Everycar driver should be forced to drive a seven and a half tonner.

Q: What would you say WRG is not so good at?A: I think it’s changed over the years. In the early days we didn’t know a lot about running canal campsand we’re now very good at it and very professional. I think there’s a lot of difficulties dealing with some ofthe local societies. We didn’t always do that right; we assumed they understood what we were doing (and ofcourse my comments relate to my experience and not what’s being done now). That was something wecould have done better in understanding the locals better and communicating with them better. I think wewere little introverted in the late ’80s perhaps. Overall WRG is very good at most things it sets out to do.

Q: Do you have a favourite derelict canal?A: Oh it would absolutely certainly, initially have to be the Grantham. Other than that I would probably gofor things like the Wilts & Berks. I’d like to see the Wey & Arun restored because that will then link down tothe other southern waterways at thePortsmouth & Arundel and the RiverArun itself. Can I say the Canal deBerry in France? That’s the Frenchnarrow canal where their canals are80ft by 8ft – I would love to see thatrestored because it’s our propor-tions. Some very interesting thingson it like aqueducts with locks at theend. I would like to see the Montfinished. Thames & Severn – Ireally look forward to boatingthrough Sapperton Tunnel one day,as I will, because I know it will bedone.

Q: Where do you see WRG’s future?A: WRG’s future is carrying on, keeping the restoration movement going. Doing the silly things - I wouldhate it if WRG became normalised and just part of everyday. Being silly, doing the stupid things is whatWRG always was and should continue to be; challenging authority, being able to stand up and say “no – wedisagree, we’re going to do this”. Like they did in the sixties: “we are going to have Operation Ashton andAshtac and we don’t care if you don’t’ agree with it. We are going to save these canals”. That’s where wecame from. Being that challenge, that difficult organisation that bloody well got on and did things.

Favourite: the Canal de Berry crosses over the River Cher

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Ela

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We’ve seen the name ‘Stroudprint’ and ‘Chris Griffiths’ on the ‘Noticeboard’ page of Navviesfor a while – we’ve also heard Chris’s name mentioned in other interviews. I headed pastBrimscombe Port (near the newly restored Gough’s Orchard Lock) and up the hill to meetChris and get his perspective on WRG.

Q: How and when did you first get involved with Canal Restoration?A: I should start first with how I got involved with canals, whichwas just before my involvement in restoration. That was at school:I developed an interest in transport and industrial history generally(I was a keen railway enthusiast); the school I was at was fortunateenough to have an inland waterways society which I joined. Thesecretary, at the time, subsequently went on to edit WaterwaysWorld for many years so I was following in good footsteps when acouple of years later I became secretary of the society. So I wenton a few boat trips on various boats of dubious age and state.Visited the waterways museum at Stoke Bruerne – not knowing atthe time that the working boats that were passing through the lockswere virtually the last coal traffic on the Grand Union. It must havebeen in the last month or so of the Blue Line boats.

I then got involved in restoration – I know it exactly – in January 1971 when I saw it announced thatthere was going to be a three-month project to patch up the nine locks of the Rochdale Canal in the centre ofManchester; and Manchester was where I was brought up. So I turned up at Castlefield for the first of theseweekends and working parties. I think I then went nearly every weekend for the next ten years! I suppose Igot hooked. The people I was working with then were the Peak Forest Canal Society in combination withthe Manchester Branch of The Inland Waterways Association who had undertaken this patching-up in orderto hold a rally of boats Easter ’71 at Dale St Basin at the junction of the Rochdale and Aston Canals. Ofcourse then it was still very much campaigning for the restoration of the Cheshire Ring. I got gradually suckedinto waterway restoration through that.

Q: So that was the 100 boat rally?A: Yes it was. I’d actually boated up the nine locks, must have been one to two years before on one ofthe boat trips with the school society, in fact that was on the narrow boats Spey and William, which wereboth under the ownership of a chap called Alan Jones who’s well known in the north-west. That stretch ofcanal really fascinates me, still does, in the way that it runs through the city centre. Then it was very ignoredand very unobtrusive whereas now, particularly along Canal Street, it’s a very vibrant area. Castlefield at thattime was the land of scrap yards and large Alsatians and almost ‘beware – here be dragons’ notices. It was areally spooky place particularly at night.

Q: What was that first dig like?A: It was a lock clearance on the bottom lock of the Rochdale 92, I can’t say I remember it all in verygreat detail, I remember some of the people I met there who I’m still in touch with. Working parties thenmerged a little bit into one – clearing one lock is pretty much like clearing another. It involved barrow hoists,which was very much the staple of working parties at that time!

Q: The Rochdale Locks patching-up – WRG wasn’t so much involved in that?A: It was organised by Peak Forest [Canal Society] and Manchester Branch IWA, towards the latterpart of the three months leading up to the rally there were some visiting working parties. There was a visitfrom London Working Party Group (which I think it was officially called then, before it changed itself into

WRG at 40Forty views for forty years

“I remember turning up at school to say

‘you don’t mind, do you, but I’m not going

to be in for the next couple of weeks –

there’s a canal to restore’.”

- Chris Griffiths

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London WRG) which was all very new to us people up north. They’d visited the Peak Forest Canal a fewtimes but this was the first time I’d run into volunteers from other parts of the country. There was somediscussion and somebody said ‘Navvies Notebook’ and I naively said ‘what’s Navvies Notebook?’ It wasexplained to me in some very short, simple, but currently unrepeatable words, by a chap who was sitting on apile of scrap wearing a woolly hat. That was my first encounter with [WRG founder and Navvies editor]Graham Palmer so I then became a subscriber to Navvies Notebook.

Q: What kept you coming back? What was your motivation?Q: A fascination with canals, and that canal in particular. And it was the people, it was a good laugh.There was very much a goal we were working to then, which was the 100 boat rally. That sort of continuedbecause after the rally there was six months or so of still some work going on on the Peak Forest and Ashtoncanals, then December ’71 the news came that the canals were going to be restored and there was going tobe major volunteer involvement. That restoration was going to start with Ashtac in spring ’72 which I gotinvolved in the preparatory work for. I was sufficiently dragged into the organisation then to be very involved.I was just finishing school at that point – in fact I gave up school during the run up to Ashtac. In theory I wasgoing to stay for another couple of months. I remember turning up at school with work boots on to go andsee my form tutor and say “you don’t mind, do you, but I’m certainly not going to be in for the next couple ofweeks – there’s a canal to restore”.

We were always working to what seemed to be relatively short-term goals at that time and I think it’smore difficult to retain volunteers’ interest if you’re setting out on the project to restore – selected at random– the Wilts and Berks , the Wey and Arun or whatever – when you know it’s not going to happen this year,there’s just a lot of on-going work.

Q: What was your role in preparation for Ashtac?A: Just at that time I was a body really. We were clearing access points, we were then sorting out accom-modation and trying to make it... I won’t say ‘fit for habitation’, but slightly less unfit for habitation. Theaccommodation for Ashtac, as is recounted, was a Gas Board showrooms which was obtained at the lastminute when the real accommodation fell through. I won’t claim at that stage to have got into the organisationbut there was a lot of work to do just to get the site ready for people to come. It’s not just the actual workon the canal that needs the preparation, but it’s all the logistical things around it.

Q: What can you remember of the actual weekend?A: It went very quickly. I have one particular memory, a sight, unfortunately I had a camera malfunctionand I don’t have the photo, but that was of the Saturday morning of people queuing up to sign on at one ofthe mill buildings at Portland Street. Thisqueue seemed to go on forever up thestreet. I walked the complete site severaltimes because I was taking photographs ofit and it was just the whole impression of somany people – there was a lot of mud butwe were used to that. It was just the sheernumber of people. And certain other aspectsare just a complete blur – I think Chester’sMild had some influence on that blur.

Q: You mentioned your camera? Ibelieve you’ve taken a lot of photos?A: I have taken some photos – not asmany as some other people. That was justanother interest really. I just started tocombine the two; as things went on usingthe photography to publicise what we weredoing came to the fore. I started to seethen that we, the volunteers, were doing allof this wonderful work but were pretty badat telling people that we doing it and re-cruiting more people to help us, and funding Ashtac: “the sheer number of people”

Harr

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and so forth. The message wasn’t always getting through. Even within Peak Forest Canal Society I felt therethat we weren’t necessarily getting the message out. Myself, along with a few other people started to try andredress that, turning up at rallies with photographs. ’72-’73 I started to get involved publicising the work wewere doing as well as helping with doing the work.

There was a little bit of friction between what might be regarded as the ‘old guard’ and the youngerelement of which I was one. I have to say there were a few people in the old guard who were very much intune with what we were trying to do to gain publicity. It was something the canal society had been reallygood at back in the ’60s in keeping pressure up for the restoration of the Cheshire Canal Ring. Namingnames, Ted Keaveney – Bob’s father – was quite a good supporter (Ted was general secretary of the soci-ety); and the other father of people who will be known now was John Palmer (senior) who had his ownadvertising and publicity agency so was versed in publicity matters. He gave a lot of support to those of uswho were learning about it for the first time.

Q: What digs did you work on after Ashtac?A: The Ashton and Peak Forest canal – we basically just got into a groove. There was two years ofworking parties every weekend with visiting working parties coming to complete the work on the canals.Once the restoration work was essentially completed on the Peak Forest and Ashton, the Peak Forestworking party re-christened itself Peak Forest Mobile and really took the view that they were going to repay(whether they liked it or not) all the groups that had come and visited during the Cheshire Ring restoration.We went more or less everywhere – usually Midlands to North – we did venture a couple of times up toScotland. Went to the River Derwent – the ill-fated River Derwent restoration scheme. Some early work onthe Droitwich, a couple of times on the River Avon (in the latter part of its restoration) and probably othersthat I’ve forgotten. Moving on a bit, early work on the Mont. Then Stratford Blitz, but by that time I waseither in London or on my way to London, I was arriving from a different direction as it were.

So yes – the mobile working parties started up. Peak Forest Mobile had a reputation for lock cham-ber clearance – that was a sort of speciality. A lot of the volunteer work back in the ’70s was very much lockchamber clearance, scrub bashing; the idea of doing more skilled work was starting to develop at that pointbut had not really fully developed.

’74 was the openings year with the Ashton, Peak Forest and the Avon opened just after that. Therewas also then a return to the start going back to the Rochdale canal. Because the Ashton and Peak Forestreopened in ’74 but the Rochdale Nine was unnavigable. There then started a more thorough restoration (stilla certain amount of make do and mend) but more definitely a reopening for the Rochdale Nine. I, by thattime, was not in Manchester but was travelling up there most weekends so I wasn’t fully involved in that.

After the Rochdale Nine was reopened the working party bit of the Peak Forest Canal Society be-came quite unrelated to the actual canal society. As I say there was a little bit of disconnect between theworking party and the sort of old guard. I felt quite strongly about that because I thought the society wasmissing an opportunity to promote the use of thecanals, to safeguard the canals, to take up the rolethat many other canal societies have taken up sincethen (some very successfully). There didn’t seem tobe any sort of plan for the future, there was a certainamount of patting on the back because the canal wasreopened. That’s a great, great achievement, there’sno taking away from that but I think the restorationshould not really have been the end – but a pointalong the way. At that time also the IWA in Man-chester, that had been a very strong organisation(monthly meetings, sometimes bringing in 100s ofpeople for a good speaker) and that seemed to bedrifting a bit as well.

In an attempt to focus attention on this I pro-posed, at an AGM of the Peak Forest Canal Society,that it be wound up. This got a lot of people out ofthe woodwork where they’d been hiding, some werequite unpleasant at what I was doing. Quite a fewpeople - I’m sure they really knew what I was doing- refused to accept that what I was really doing was Rochdale Nine: a WRG Smalley is lowered in

Chris

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saying ‘please look, please look – make a future for the society’. I withdrew – the plan was to withdraw themotion – because I didn’t really want it to wind up, I wanted it to go on and be strong. It’s of regret to methat I can say ‘I told you so’ because the society fizzled out some years later.

It was also at a time when we generally, nationally, were having to fight to keep the waterways united.It was at a time when there was discussion of breaking the waterways system up between, I think, riverauthorities – there was certainly a big campaign. I, and others, thought it would be good if the restorationmovement were to show a bit more of a united face - the idea of WRG North-West was born. WRG NWcame into being, which really, other than the colour that things were painted, wasn’t a lot different from PeakForest Mobile. WRG NW then started to develop a bit more as part of WRG. I think that’s worked out allright – it’s still about.

Q: What took you to London?A: I’d lived for most of the ’70s in Stafford and in ’76 I finished my course at college and starting working– a job in London came up with the same company and sounded interesting. Looked around for a bedsit inLondon, found one, and realised I was about half a mile away from 4, Wentworth Court which is ‘where yousend for your Navvies Notebook’as the song would have it. I started seeing London WRG fairly regularlyplus the WRG National organisers, got involved with publicity for WRG nationally and in ’77 with theDeepcut Dig.

Q: What was the Stratford Blitz?Stratford Canal was probably the first real canal restoration project which opened in the ’60s. It had neverbeen restored on a very long-term basis though: there’d been quite a lot of patching up and getting it working.I don’t think David Hutchings would have denied that at all. By the mid-’70s it was falling apart a bit, par-ticularly Wilmcote Locks, so WRG decided to run a winter-long ‘blitz’. It was a working navigation; it was inthe care of the National Trust at the time who didn’t really have the resources or the expertise to do whatneeded to be done. So there were working parties every weekend, generally there was a visiting group plusthere was a core of regular unattached people who sort of built up. We primarily set out to sort out all thebywashes on Wilmcote Locks. A lot of them were underground bywashes that had collapsed, replaced byopen bywashes. Quite a lot of piling done up near Wootton Wawen. That went on for two winters - thewinters of ’74-’75 and ’75-’76.

There were the first ever New Year’s camps held as part of Stratford Blitz. You didn’t have to knowanything to be a camp leader then so I ended up leading one of the camps somehow; partly because I hadbeen briefly involved with canal camps, I’d been on some summer canal camps. They were in the first coupleof years then, they were run initially by Alan Petrie. Alan had experience of National Trust Acorn camps – hecame to WRG with the idea of running summer camps. He was ‘allowed’ to do it – he did do it and he did itpretty well for much of the ’70s. It was one of these things that Graham [Palmer]didn’t really see as being atthe centre of things, partly becauseGraham didn’t invent it. He wasn’tagainst it, but he just didn’t see itbeing an important part (I think hisviews changed a bit later on). A lot ofthe people who went on the earlycamps tended to be existing volun-teers, it was not then seen as a way ofbringing new blood in. It was just away of doing longer periods of work,first in the summer, then the two NewYear camps on the Stratford.

I can’t have screwed up toobadly because I ended up running the’77-’78 New Year camp which wason the Mont – just scrub bashing. Insome ways I was against the grain insupporting camps because I wasn’treally a member of the WRG innercircle – I kind of hung around theedges of the inner circle – I was a Bywash building at Wilmcote on a Stratford Blitz

Chris

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later arrival in London. I thought canal camps were a great idea and I could see the potential and how theycould be a recruiting tool. Towards the end of the ’70s that started to be the way but we still suffered fromthe fact that we were doing all this good work and not really telling people loudly enough. That probably, to acertain extent, still continues today.

I started at that point (end of the ’70s) to get involved in odd projects, almost as a rent-a-person. I gotinvolved with a scheme which was obviously never going anywhere which was to restore the HuddersfieldNarrow Canal. We were all quite clear! I edited the newsletter and did some publicity stuff for a couple ofyears – it was really a ‘help it get going’, there was a core of local Huddersfield based people who set it up(Bob Dewey, John Maynard, Margaret Sinfield and so on) and there were a few more of us who werejobbing canal restoration people who sort of helped in the early years. It was never something I had time todo for a long time.

The other project I got involved with in the middle of the ’70s was the Boat Museum at Ellesmere Port.Again, I was conned, bludgeoned, whatever; my parents happened to be living very close to Tony Hirst whowas running working parties for the then North West Museum of Inland Navigation. He was an electricalengineer at the time and I’d completed my training to be an electrical engineer (something I didn’t do verymuch of), he dragged me along there and got involved whilst the Toll House was being restored. I’d alsodone some work on boats and so forth. A full 20 years later I ended up editing the boat museum societynewsletter.

It was probably around 1980, I’d done about ten years of fairly full-on WRG and other restorationstuff, that I sort of faded off the scene; due to the usual things of buying a house and started to ‘do work’ thatrequired me to ‘do work’ and started requiring me to travel and go abroad. I bought a house which neededrestoring, that had at least one working party from London WRG with their red hats off. I think what finishedme off was the 1980 Lee Valley National Rally which I somehow got dragged on to the committee of. Ithought just as publicity officer which I was doing, but at the last minute this person that was running siteservices decided that he couldn’t cope with doing the electrics; I took that on, only to discover that all thegenerators that had been ordered were the wrong sort. That weekend and the weeks running up to thatnearly finished me off with waterways. I kept in touch and I’ve turned up in places and done odd jobs suchas editing magazines.

Q: You talked about getting more involved in publicity at the end of the ’70s – what kindof things were you doing?A: The big project we did was Deepcut Dig, which really went to town on that to try and get not just localpublicity but national publicity as well. We did pretty well, got The Times quite interested. Plus re-doing theWRG stand for rallies so it wasn’t just a Smalley excavator and a couple of wheelbarrows. Actually tried toexplain what we were doing and why we were doing it. It set me off down that path, because it’s now mybusiness; some of the experience I had doing publicity for WRG stood me in good stead for later on in work.

Q: What’s your relationship with Navvies?A: When I moved here to Stroud in 1999 I bought a print and design company and at some point I madethe rash offer, about 5 years ago when we got a shiny new colour machine, that we would do colour coversfor Navvies which we’ve been doing ever since at... not exactly free, but a very advantageous rate for WRG.Also we’ve provided backup to John Hawkins: if, for any reason, WRG Print has not been able to print anissue we’ve done the whole lot for him.

Q: How would you say Navvies has changed over the years?A: I just had a look back at a couple of the early ones, I was just trying to refresh my memory. Navvies,in the early days, did come over as a Graham Palmer rant, almost from front cover to back. Nowadays theremay still be a small amount of Mike Palmer rant or Martin Ludgate rant but it doesn’t dominate. I think it’slike everything else WRG has done: it has become much more professional but has not got to a stage whereit’s not unidentifiably WRG or Navvies. I think WRG should be professional in nature and approach (thoughnot necessarily paid) but I think it would lose a lot if it wasn’t what people have come to expect of WRG: alittle bit slightly revolutionary; not quite of the establishment. You’ve got to have some people around who aregoing to ask the awkward questions. I’ve just seen the results of the elections to the Canal & River Trust(C&RT) and Nigel Stevens is going to represent the boating industry. He will be asking one or two slightlydifficult questions and I think that betrays his WRG origins! Co-operation is great, and long may it continue,perhaps the new charity has finally started to get the idea of volunteers and how they can be a help – they’renot just a cheap way of doing things? That’s yet to be seen.

page 23

Q: What are you most proud ofabout your involvement?A: Being involved with the Cheshire Ringrestoration, the reopening of those canalswas an important time. I was quite pleasedto be involved with starting WRG NW, onbalance I think it’s helped WRG more thanit’s hindered it! I was just really happy to bepart of WRG at that point of its life.

Q: Who has inspired you?A: I suppose top of the list has to beGraham Palmer. He inspired me, he alsofrustrated me because his way of doingthings was to decide what he was going todo and then feign tunnel vision until thatwas done and not listen to anybodysuggesting that his routes may not be the best. I mentioned earlier people who encouraged my early, some-times misguided, involvement: people like Ted Keaveney and John Palmer senior. Beyond that, in the historicalcontext the late Edward Paget-Tomlinson (from my boat museum involvement); for interest in boats, Tony Lewery.And Charles Hadfield - I read loads of Hadfield. And a number of other people in WRG, if I name two orthree I will have missed four more. Lots of people who had the knack of making a working party work.

Q: Which is your favourite derelict canal?A: Derelict now? Or derelict then? Derelict then has to be the Rochdale Nine. There’s no doubt aboutthat. Derelict now? I’m a big fan of city waterways, so pick a bit of the BCN that’s not currently navigable.

Q: Do you have any ‘do you remember the time when...’ stories?A: That is so difficult. I remember turning up to accommodations that turned out to be sheds with doorsthat don’t close. I remember the couple of occasions on the Rochdale Nine where a small amount of propel-lant was used to start a timber fire, only a little too much was used. It’s the way firemen’s heads appear onbridge parapets and the helmets arrive in a row because somebody has thought there was a large explosion,when really it was only a minor, minor bang.

Deepcut Dig. I think that was where we saw WRG making this transition. I think Deepcut Dig wasactually the start of new WRG – this was construction rather than clearance. That was really good to havebeen involved in and the scale of the thing made it very memorable.

Q: Where do you see WRG’s future?A: I don’t see why WRG can’t continue in pretty much the way it has done. It will change, it’s changedenough in the 40 years that I’ve known it. Volunteer involvement in the waterways is here to stay, it’s sort ofofficial now. But I don’t think that all the volunteer input is suddenly going to say “we’ll be friends of theC&RT, we don’t need WRG any more”. I don’t think that would work, I think people would drift away. Itwould leave high-and-dry the schemes that are not in the C&RT empire – it would ignore the pipedreamschemes – it would have ignored the Huddersfield Narrow.

It’s difficult to know how the immediate future will lie, whether WRG will perhaps get more involved inthe present British Waterways estate, because C&RT has said it’s going to increase volunteer involvement. Ithink WRG’s real role is in these pioneering schemes – starting out, or they’re long term and need somebodyto keep the momentum. Such discussion wouldn’t be complete without mention of the Mont – it will happenone day. The pressure has to be kept up both in terms of volunteers working there and politically - I think itneeds somebody like WRG to be still there. The IWA has got its act together over recent times, but they’vegot a really important role in the national picture and the lobbying of Parliament. We still need the local canalsocieties to chivvy around the edges and I think WRG plays a very important supporting role.

I hope you’re all continuing to enjoy reading these as much as I’m enjoying conductingthem! I continue to be surprised at just how different they all are, I’m having a lovely timegoing round and meeting the interviewees. Next time: Rick Barnes.

Helen Gardner

Deepcut Dig: ‘WRG making this transition’Chris

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Navvies diaryYour guide to all the forthcoming work parties

For details of diary dates beyond the end of this list ple

Apr 21/22 wrgBITM Wendover Arm: Bentomat lining, using the tried and trusted WAT meth

Apr 21/22 WRG BCN Cleanup: Walsall Canal

Apr 28/29 NWPG Thames & Severn Canal: Bricklaying at Inglesham Lock

Apr 28 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collection

Apr 28/29 WRG PAT Testing: Testing the Sammy Kit in Basingstoke

May 4-10 WAT Wendover Arm: Seven-day weekend. Bed & bank lining.

May 5/6/7 Essex WRG Wilts & Berks Canal: joint dig with WRG North West

May 5/6/7 wrgNW Wilts & Berks Canal: Joint dig with Essex WRG

May 5/6 KESCRG Wendover Arm: Whitehouses. Accom at Ivinghoe Aston VH

May 12 Sat WRG Leaders Training Day: for Canal camp and work party leaders, at Rowin

May 13 Sun WRG Committee & Board Meetings: Fillongley

May 19/20 wrgBITM Rickmansworth Waterways Festival: Site Services.

May 19/20 London WRG Chesterfield Canal

May 26/27 NWPG Wey & Arun Canal: Gennets Lock

Jun 2-5 wrgBITM Boxmoor Canal Festival: (Wendover Arm Trust) EVENT CANCELLED

Jun 2-4 IWA/CCT Stroud-on-Water - IWA Trail-boat Festival: Cotswold Canals

Jun 9/10 London WRG Mon & Brec Canal

Jun 9/10 KESCRG To be arranged: possibly Basingstoke Canal

Jun 9 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collection

Jun 16/17 wrgBITM Tool maintenance: at Dauntsey Lock

Jun 23/24 London WRG Tool Maintenance

Jun 23-30 WACT Camp Wey & Arun Canal: WACT Trust Camp at DunsfoldConstruction of a boathouse, slipway and landing stages

Jun 23/24 WRG WRG Training Weekend: Lichfield Canal

Jun 30-Jul 7 Camp 201204 Monmouthshire Canal

Jun 30-Jul 7 Camp 201205 Wey & Arun Canal: NWPG camp. Dunsfold Summit.

Jul 7/8 Essex WRG Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation

Jul 7/8 London WRG Basingstoke Canal: provisional

Jul 7-14 Camp 201206 Monmouthshire Canal

Jul 14 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collection

Jul 14-21 Camp 201207 Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal

Jul 14-21 Camp 201208 Wendover Arm: KESCRG Camp. Working at Whitehouses. Accom at Ivi

Jul 15 Sun WRG Committee & Board Meetings: Rowington

Jul 21/22 wrgBITM Wey & Arun Canal: Gunsmouth Island at Shalford

Jul 21/22 wrgNW Montgomery Canal: pre-pre-Camps

Jul 21-28 Camp 201209 Lancaster Canal

Jul 21-28 Camp 201210 Basingstoke Canal

Jul 28/29 London WRG North Walsham & Dilham Canal

page 25

Canal Camps cost £56 per week unless otherwise stated. Bookings

for WRG Camps identified by a camp number e.g. 'Camp 2012-04'

should go to WRG Canal Camps, Island House, Moor Road, Chesham

HP5 1WA. Tel: 01494 783453, [email protected]. Diary compiled

by Dave Wedd. Tel: 01252 874437, [email protected]

ease contact diary compiler Dave Wedd: see top of page

hod. Dave Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected]

01494-783453 [email protected]

Bill Nicholson 01844-343369 [email protected]

David McCarthy 0161-740-2179

George Eycott [email protected]

Roger Leishman 01442-874536 [email protected]

Frank Wallder 01992-636164 [email protected]

David McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected]

Bobby Silverwood 07971-814986 [email protected]

ngton. Helen Gardner 07989-425346 [email protected]

Mike Palmer 01564-785293 [email protected]

Dave Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected]

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected]

Bill Nicholson 01844-343369 [email protected]



Bobby Silverwood 07971-814986 [email protected]




George Whitehead 01626-775498 [email protected]

Jenny Black 01494-783453 [email protected]



Frank Wallder 01992-636164 [email protected]





inghoe Aston. 01494-783453 [email protected]

Mike Palmer 01564-785293 [email protected]


David McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected]




page 26

Every Tuesday BCA Basingstoke Canal Chris Healy 01252-370073Once per month: pls check BCNS BCN waterways Mike Rolfe 07763-1717352nd Sunday & alternate Thurs BCS Buckingham area Athina Beckett 01908-661217Anytime inc. weekdays BCT Aqueduct section Gerald Fry 01288-353273Every Mon and Wed CCT Cotswold (W depot) Ron Kerby 01453-836018Every mon am Thu pm CCT Cotswold (E end) John Maxted 01285-861011Various dates CCT Cotswold Phase 1a Jon Pontefract 07986-351412Every Sunday ChCT Various sites Mick Hodgetts 01246-620695Every Tuesday CSCT Chichester Canal Carley Sitwell 01243 773002Every Tue & Wed C&BN Chelmer & Blackwater John Gale 01376-3348964th Sunday of month ECPDA Langley Mill Michael Golds 0115-932-8042Second Sun of month FIPT Foxton Inclined Plane Mike Beech 0116-279-26572nd weekend of month GCRS Grantham Canal Ian Wakefield 0115-989-21282nd Sat of month GWCT Nynehead Lift Denis Dodd 01823-661653Tuesdays H&GCT Oxenhall Brian Fox 01432 358628Weekends H&GCT Over Wharf House Maggie Jones 01452 618010Wednesdays H&GCT Over Wharf House Wilf Jones 01452 413888Weekends H&GCT Hereford Aylestone Martin Danks 01432 344488Every Sunday if required IWPS Bugsworth Basin Ian Edgar 0161-427 7402Every day KACT Bradford-on-Avon Derrick Hunt 01225-8630662nd Sunday of month LCT Lancaster N. Reaches Paul Shaw 01524-356851st, 2nd, 4th Sun + 3rd Sat LHCRT Lichfield Sue Williams 01543-6714273rd Sunday of month LHCRT Hatherton Denis Cooper 01543-374370Last weekend of month MBBCS Creams Paper Mill Steve Dent 07802-973228Two Sundays per month NWDCT N Walsham Canal David Revill 01603-7386482nd & last Sundays PCAS Pocklington Canal Paul Waddington 01757-638027Every Wed and 1st Sat RGT Stowmarket Navigtn. Martin Bird 01394-3807652nd Sunday of month SCARS Sankey Canal Colin Greenall 01744-7317461st Sunday of month SCCS Combe Hay Locks Derrick Hunt 01225-863066Two weekends per month SHCS Basingstoke Canal Duncan Paine 01252-614125Last weekend of month SCS Stover Canal George Whitehead 01626-7754982nd Sunday of month SNT Sleaford Navigation Mel Sowerby 01522-8568101st weekend of month SUCS Newhouse Lock Mike Friend 01948-880723Every Tuesday morning TMCA Thames & Medway C Brian Macnish 01732-823725Every Sunday & Thurs WACT varied construction Eric Walker 023-9246-3025Mondays (2 per month) WACT tidying road crossings John Empringham 01483-562657Wednesdays WACT Tickner's Heath Depot John Smith 01903-235790Wednesdays WACT maintenance work Peter Jackman 01483-772132Sundays mainly WACT Loxwood Link Kev Baker 02380-861074Thursdays WACT Winston Harwood Grp Tony Clear 01903-774301Various dates WACT Hedgelaying (Oct-Mar) Keith Nichols 01403-753882last w/e (Fri-Thu) WAT Drayton Beauchamp Roger Leishman 01442-874536Every weekend WBCT Wilts & Berks Canal Rachael Banyard 01249-892289

Please send any additions corrections or deletions to diary compiler Dave Wedd (see previous page)

Abbreviations used in Diary:

BCA Basingstoke Canal AuthorityBCNS Birmingham Canal Navigations Soc.BCS Buckingham Canal SocietyBCT Bude Canal TrustChCT Chesterfield Canal TrustCBN Chelmer & Blackwater NavigationCSCT Chichester Ship Canal TrustCCT Cotswolds Canals TrustEAWA East Anglian Waterways AssociationECPDA Erewash Canal Pres. & Devt. Assoc.FIPT Foxton Inclined Plane TrustGCRS Grantham Canal Restoration SocietyGWCT Grand Western Canal TrustH&GCT Hereford & Gloucester Canal TrustIWPS Inland Waterways Protection SocietyKACT Kennet & Avon Canal Trust

KESCRG Kent & E Sussex Canal Rest. GroupLCT Lancaster Canal TrustLHCRT Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Rest'n TrustMBBCS Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal SocietyNWPG Newbury Working Party GroupNWDCT North Walsham & Dilham Canal TrustPCAS Pocklington Canal Amenity SocietyRGT River Gipping TrustSCARS Sankey Canal Restoration SocietySCCS Somersetshire Coal Canal SocietySHCS Surrey & Hants Canal SocietySCS Stover Canal SocietySNT Sleaford Navigation TrustSUCS Shropshire Union Canal SocietyTMCA Thames & Medway Canal AssociationWACT Wey & Arun Canal TrustWAT Wendover Arm TrustWBCT Wilts & Berks Canal Trust

Mobile groups' socials: phone to confirmLondon WRG: 7:30pm on Tues 11 days before dig. 'Star Tavern'Belgrave Mews West, London. Tim Lewis 07802-518094

NWPG: 7:30pm on 3rd Tue of month at the 'Hope Tap',West end of Friar St. Reading. Phil Dray 07956 185305

Navvies diaryCanal societies’ regular working parties

page 27

Lettersto the editor

Could the Sahara come

to the aid of the

Montgomery Canal? And

no, this isn’t a reference

to water shortages...

Dear Martin,

Montgomery Canal Lining Re-visited

Last year, after a week as a volunteer on theMont lining project with WRG I had an op-portunity to compare the methods beingused either side of Price’s Bridge (NavviesOct/Nov 2011). The main drawback on themethod being used by WRG was concludedto be the extensive effort in machinery andmanpower required to build up the 300mmof earth to protect the lining, whereas thedrawback of the SUCS method was the in-vestment in money and manpower needed toprotect the lining with dense concrete blockslaid on edge. These drawbacks also meant ineach case that lining progress was ratherslow.

Using volunteers, the recovery of canalbeds will at the very least require the use ofheavy machinery to shape the bed profileand volunteer effort to lay some form ofimpermeable material and its protection.The trick would seem tobe to develop a liningscheme which wouldkeep costs to the mini-mum and be as simpleas possible to allowsignificant progress.

In a real leap for-ward for them, (andperhaps for others in-volved in canal liningelsewhere) SUCS hasover the winter sourceda new ‘wonder’ liningmaterial called ‘SaharaTerraseal’. Sahara isdescribed as a water-based polymeric fluidthat can be coated on tomost supporting matri-ces to deliver a non-permeable barrier towater, with Terrasealbeing described as a

non-woven geo-fabric material pre-coatedwith Sahara for applications where a non-leak, self-healing (puncture resistant) waterblocking barrier is required. See http://hur.com/en/about-hr/locations/europe/hr-chempharm-uk.html for details. As far as isknown this material has not been used forcanal lining before.

Pertinent properties of the lining mate-rial are:

1. The cost is about £5.50 per sq. metre,much the same as Bentonite

2. Nothing is required between the linerand the bare earth

3. Nothing is required between the linerand the concrete block over burden

4. The liner can be laid in puddles and canbe rained on. It gets very slippery whenwet but will revert to its normal stateon drying out.

5. It does not require covering to be effec-tive but, of course, in a working canal itdoes require some form of protection.

The new lining material could reduce the need for covering

Hele

n G

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ner

page 28

Lettersto the editor

Will too much heat turn

your puddle clay into a

brick lining? And why isn’t

‘winding’ pronounced

like ‘winding’?

The new liner has allowed SUCS tochange to laying their 4in dense concreteblocks from being on edge to flat and withno other supporting lining material to lay onor above the liner, have made considerablesavings in lining costs (not shaping) (at afinger in the air guess, I would say about40%) and about doubled their lining rate,giving them the enviable problem of how toshape the channel fast enough to keep aheadof the lining team. So costs are down andprogress is up, a rather unusual situation!

If I were a Project Manager I wouldcertainly be rather excited about the arrivalof this new material (as Mike Friend mustbe!) and those in the organisation involvedwith raising money and writing the chequesought to be pretty happy too.

With many volunteer groups now in-volved with canal lining there must be everyhope the wealth of intelligence, imaginationand lateral thinking being brought to bearwill bring about even further cost effective,innovative, simple solutions.

J J PriceA Novice Volunteer

Dear MartinCan anyone tell me whether heat has a per-manent effect on puddle clay? I ask becausequite often when we are scrub bashing a drybit of canal we have big bonfires in the canalbed, probably burning for at least two days.I was told once that if a fire is burnt for thatlength of time, the heat penetrates at leasttwo to three feet down into the soil, and cantake several weeks to cool down afterwards.I’ve noticed that when we’ve had fires on thebank of the Wilts & Berks, which is naturalclay, the soil when it cools down seems tototally change in chemical consistency, andbecomes dry, loose and brittle (and oftenorange coloured). It has none of the sticki-ness of clay.

Having bonfires in the bed of a canalwithout natural clay, it doesn’t matter be-cause before it is re-watered, presumablyclay will be brought in (or it is lined), but in

an area of natural clay I’m told that it ishoped that the original puddle will be intactand will be re-used.

Di Smurthwaite

Dear MartinWhy ‘Winding’ as in ‘Breeze’ rather than‘Winding’ as in ‘Clock’?

When I first heard someone pronounce‘winding’ as in breeze (B) I assumed that itwas a mispronunciation but I now fullyrealise I was mistaken. With a naval back-ground I am very used to the term but pro-nounced as in clock (C). The term is usuallyapplied when a ship is lying alongside a jettyand there is the need to turn it (her) roundto have full access to the other side, say forpainting, normally using tugs. In that casethe connection of the term in English withthe act seems straightforward as with turninga key to wind a clock. However, winding (B)seems a term disconnected from the act ofturning round a boat. Might it perhaps havedeveloped from winding (C) through somestrong regional accents? As a child I certainlyremember someone who pronounced bus asbuzz, so it might well be possible, or mightthere be some other explanation?

Best regardsJ J Price

The explanation I’ve heard is that it wascalled ‘winding’ as in the wind that blows,because in the days before powered craft,when boats would be turned using poles andropes, it made sense to take advantage ofany wind to help. If the wind’s blowing frombehind you, you would put the front of theboat into the winding hole and let the windblow the back end round; if it was in yourface you would go past the winding hole,back into it (using your pole) and allow thewind to bring the front end round.

I have to say, however, that I’ve neverseen any scholarly research into the deriva-tion; it’s just ‘one of those things that oldboaters knew’. Can anyone shed any light?

The Editor

page 29

ProgressManchester Bolton & Bury

We start our regular round-up of

restoration progress on the Manchester

Bolton & Bury Canal, where

they’re mending milestones

and relaying towpaths

Salford Towpath Re-surfacing

The length re-surfaced runs from Park HouseBridge to Lumbs Aqueduct. This length oftowpath was often blocked by vegetationwhich prevented its use as a path or forcedwalkers onto the top of the canal bank nextto a drop into water or the dry bed of thecanal. Work started in October 2011; thenew towpath surface is typically 2 metreswide and is constructed with at least 150mmdepth of crushed limestone. Action has beentaken to eliminate Japanese Knotweed. Thetowpath is not currently a right of way but alegal agreement accompanying the work willchange the status of the towpath to a per-missive path. The Society has cleared thecanal bed of trees at the same time.

This is intended to the first phase of aproject which will create a walking/cyclingroute along the line of the canal from PrincesBridge in Salford to Clifton Country Park andinto Bury. The restoration of the towpathwould not conflict with full restoration of thecanal which remains the long-term aim.

Volunteers work alongside the new towpath The damaged milestone under repair

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BBCS

Funding for the surfacing the remainder ofthe towpath to the Salford/Bury boundary atClifton Aqueduct is actively being sought.David Greenfield (Salford City Council)

A Tale of Two Milestones

Two of our quarter-milestones have been putback in place in 2011.

About ten years ago a member re-ported that the front of milestone 3 atAgecroft Road Bridge had broken off; prob-ably due to frost damage. John & MargaretFletcher went to collect the broken piece, andit was then kept in John’s shed.

The towpath re-surfacing worksseemed to provide an obvious time to re-store the milestone, and with advice andmaterials from Agecroft stonemason KevinCrowley we put the fragment back in place.Then over several days I went back to fill inthe deeper cracks with patching mortar.

A second milestone (6¾) was rein-stated in Ringley in 2011.

Paul Hindle (MB&BCS)

page 30

Wendover Arm

January Working Party:To avoid damag-ing the ground conditions in Stages 2/3 westof Bridge 4A that have been left ready forprofiling in better weather, work concen-trated on bank clearance in the Whitehousesarea including removing the bulge in thebank opposite the former outlets from theold pumping station.

It had been thought that the bulge hadbeen constructed to protect the towpath bankfrom the discharge of water from the pump-ing station outlets. This was discounted asthe bulge was found to contain rubble thatwas obviously from building demolition atWhitehouses, something that happened over100 years after the pumping station closed in1836. During the clearance at Whitehousestwo discoveries were made.

Firstly a Grand Junction Canal Com-pany boundary marker post in front of theboundary fence that runs behind the back ofthe Whitehouses site. Secondly, it was knownthat a well existed near the former pumpingstation. During the same clearance opera-tions the well was located.

February Working Party: This was awork party of mixed fortunes due to theweather. On Friday and Saturday work com-menced on clearing a path through the woodbetween Whitehouses and Bridge 4 to createboth an access route to future water controlfunctions at Whitehouses once the canal isre-watered and to act as a nature trailthrough the woods. The opportunity wasalso taken to level off the ground behind themooring wall at Bridge 4. On the Saturdaywe were joined by Essex WRG who madeprogress on removing new growth on thebanks between Little Tring and Bridge 4.

Sunday was a different story! 4"- 6"snow had fallen and Essex WRG wisely de-cided to head for home rather than riskdeteriorating road conditions for their jour-ney back to Essex. A few hardy volunteerswho had actually managed to get to LittleTring completed stump pulling from the path

ProgressWendover Arm

through the woods at Whitehouses.Work re-commenced on Wednesday

and Thursday and included carrying outessential fence repairs. At the beginning ofthe work party we had discovered that somelight fingered person/s had removed everyother road pin from a length of plastic fenc-ing along the top of the towpath bank andthese had to be replaced as well as makingrepairs to the wind damaged plastic fence.Work continued on clearing both banks fromLittle Tring where Essex WRG had worked onthe Saturday and scaffold tubes were cut anddrilled with bolt holes ready for the addi-tional information boards that are to beerected at the March working party. Not oneof our most productive working parties but anumber of minor works out of the way toleave us clear for re-lining to carry on.

Roger Leishman, Restoration [email protected]

Discoveries: the boundary post and the well

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page 31

ProgressBuckingham Canal

Buckingham Canal

Buckingham Canal Society now has the leasedocument for the Berks Bucks & Oxon Wild-life Trust Nature Reserve near Hyde LaneLock, so its officially ours for the next sevenyears at least. So on Friday 27th January wetook delivery of a set of redundant lock gatesfrom the Northampton Arm where the gateswere being renewed. British Waterwaysarranged delivery on a low-loader to HomeFarm, opposite the Nature Reserve, where BCShad arranged for a telehandler to take thegates down the track to the Nature Reserve.They have been placed in the canal bed forthe time being and will be installed at HydeLane lock at a later date. They will not beworking gates, but will give an impression tothe public walking along the Ouse Valley Wayof what the canal will look like once restored.

With the telehandler on site some ofour volunteers took the opportunity to havea go at driving it as we had a WRG traininginstructor on siteas well.

The plan-ning applicationto re-water ourBourton Meadowsite has now beensubmitted. Weare planningsome seriousfundraising overthe next fewmonths to getthis stretch ofcanal in water. Inthe current cli-mate large grantsmay be hard tocome by so a lotof the preparationwork at BourtonMeadow mayhave to be carriedout by volunteers,which will involve

the hiring in of plant etc. This will againhopefully give our volunteers the chance tolearn new skills such as driving diggers anddumper trucks.

At the same time plans are also goingahead with preparations to re-water the canalat the Cosgrove end. Discussions are ongo-ing with BW and our volunteers continue toclear the bed of the canal, where we hope todo some-re-profiling and install earth bundsready to re-water the first section and test forleakage - when conditions and waterresources allow!

Again we invite anyone in our areato come and view all the current workbeing carried out on our work parties,which are held on alternate Thursdays andon the second Sunday of each month. Atpresent most of the work parties are beingheld at Cosgrove. [email protected] for moreinformation.

Athina Beckett

Meanwhile down on the Grand

Union Buckingham Arm, the

Canal Society has acquired a

nature reserve and a pair of

second hand lock gates...

The second hand gates arrive from Northampton

BC

S

page 32

ProgressSussex Ouse

Sussex Ouse

Paul Morris R.I.P.

It is with much regret andsadness that I have to reportthat Paul Morris, the projectmanager and driving forcebehind the restoration atIsfield Lock, died on 1st Febru-ary following a short illness.

It is no exaggeration tosay that without Paul’s drive,practical skills, ingenuity andgenerous giving of his time,equipment and money, therestoration project would nothave achieved the progress ithas during the last six years.

The work at the lock willcontinue but all the volunteers

know they aregoing to miss thewealth of knowl-edge and thequiet supervisionthe ever-presentPaul brought tothe restorationworksite. Thecontribution hemade to theproject shouldnever be forgot-ten. The SussexOuse RestorationTrust has lost anirreplaceableproject managerand a goodfriend.

Our condo-lences andthoughts go toPaul’s wife Lindaand his familyduring this diffi-cult time.

Paul Morris relaxing during a break from work at Isfield

The new work site at Iron Gate Lock in December before work began...

“Without Paul’s drive, practical skills,

ingenuity and generous giving of his

time, equipment and money, the

restoration project would not have

achieved the progress it has”

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page 33

ProgressSussex Ouse

As restoration continues at

Isfield Lock, the Sussex

Ouse Restoration Trust

starts work on a new project

to clear Iron Gates Lock

Restoration Update – Isfield Lock

Having last reported that the site at Isfieldwas locked and secured for the wintermonths, the determination of the volunteers,and some reasonable weather, has enabled acertain level of minor restoration work andpreparation for the summer months to con-tinue down on the Sussex Ouse.

Planning is underway as to the bestway to achieve the 2012 target, namelyrepairing the large hole that exists in the forebay of the chamber. Until this is done therebuilding of the western wall and westlower wing wall cannot continue. This task isthe primary restoration target for 2012

A Second Front: Iron Gate Lock

Since the New Year a group of hardy andkeen volunteers have ventured out to theremote Iron GateLock site that issituated at thesouthern extrem-ity of the landadjoining andbelonging to theNational Trust’sSheffield ParkGardens.

Prior to thework the site wascompletely over-grown and hid-den from view.But under thesupervision of NTstaff the workingparties havecleared the siteand after just afew weeks thedifference is forall to see. Al-though there areno plans at thisstage to continue

the work as a full restoration project, thework has enabled the NT, SORT and visitorsto view, learn and appreciate the history ofthe lock and the Ouse Navigation.

The NT plan to allow supervised accessto the site for visitors to Sheffield Park Gar-dens this summer and to provide a self-guided walk leaflet that includes the RiverOuse and the lock. They also plan to providean information board at the site.

SORT will continue the work at IronGate lock for few weeks more before turn-ing their attention back to Isfield. Anyoneinterested in helping with any aspect ofrestoration or the Trust’s aims, and thatincludes fund raising and other non-physi-cal tasks, should contact SORT via theirweb site on sxouse.org.uk or contact TedLintott on 01444-414413 [email protected]

Terry Owen

...and in February after five weeks of site clearance work

page 34

ProgressSleaford and Mont

Sleaford Navigation

December 18th saw the last SNT work partyof the year at Haverholme Lock. A slightlylow key affair possibly due to Christmasshopping or the fact that it was very cold.

More progress was made reducing thetree upstream of the bywash that was startedin November. However, our careful planningin November came unstuck. We had used theTirfor to pull the roots out onto the side ofthe river and leave them to dry making themlighter and easier to move. This was spoiledby the river level rising and flooding over allthe area where we had been working. Wetherefore spent quite a bit of time using theTirfor to move those roots before starting onthe tree again.

The lack of available light stopped usfinishing the job but there is only a smallamount left to do next time. Just one branchand some trimming of ones that we havealready cut off on previous occasions.

In the meantime two volunteers wereworking on the old bywash structure remov-ing the remains of an old bush and its roots.They also removed the last part of the origi-nal structure to prepare for the new founda-tions which will be necessary for the newwalls and floor of the rebuilt bywash and weir.

Shropshire Union Canal Society

The end of the ‘restoration season’ gives us achance not only to rest our collective wearylimbs but also to reflect on the Society’srestoration effort during 2011. As mostreaders will know the work is concentratedon 450m of the Montgomery betweenRedwith Bridge and Pryce’s Bridge. The workstarted in March 2008. By the start of 2011the entire 450m of stone wash wall on thetowpath side was finished, together with 130m of reinforced concrete retaining wall lo-cated on the offside at the Redwith end.Much of the work on Pryce’s Bridge itself,including the invert, was also complete.

The first three work parties in January,

February and March included both hedgelaying and work on the channel. Some 150mof hedge along the towpath was finished(just!) by the end of March. The work wasdifficult because some of the hedge wasdisturbed during the work by contractors topile and rebuild the bank in this area before2008, with the result that the hedge growthappeared at different levels on the embank-ment. The result, however, is a very highquality piece of hedge laying and is a tributeto the 40 volunteers who contributed to thework over the course of the winter.

Work on shaping the channel literally gotstuck in the mud. The problem was not onlythe rain, but also both the volume of groundwater and the resulting level of the water table.A technique had been developed in 2010 ofexcavating the base of the canal and theninstalling a land drain which permitted water tobe pumped away. Although the idea of puttinga drain in the bottom of a canal might sound abit counter intuitive, it in fact works. The drainenables water to be disposed of quickly andhence permits vehicle movement withoutexcessive damage to the base of the channel.The problem in those early months was that itwas so wet that we decided to dig out the baseand leave the drain until later. Big mistake.....We arrived in March to find our carefully exca-vated channel looked like, of all things, a canal!It took us a whole day to pump that lot outand we learnt the lesson.

From April onwards all the workforce

Attacking the tree by Haverholme Lock

page 35

returned to construction or channel shapingwork. But something else happened in April– our luck with the weather changed. Thework party was held in glorious sunny dryweather and this pattern continued more orless for the whole of the restoration season.It had a major influence on progress.

We began by finishing the facing of theoffside retaining wall with stone and thiscontinued until the topping-out ceremony inJuly. This finished the stone wall buildingwhich began on our first day on the site inMarch 2008. Just about every volunteer con-tributed to the wall building in some way overthis time. At the start only a couple of volun-teers actually laid the stones but by the endsome 25 had (aided by training and experi-ence) become competent in this task. The wallbuilders were backed up by the unsung heroesof the mortar mixing and transport gang whodid one of the hardest physical jobs on site.The retaining wall construction involvedvaried expertise in excavation, reinforcedconcrete and block work as well as stone-work, and all were done to a high standard.

The output of the channel shapinggang from April onwards accelerated withevery passing dry month. The work con-sisted initially of excavating the bottom ofthe channel to just above finished grade andmaking sure that this was level. The Frenchdrain was then constructed. This esoteric-sounding device consists of a half metredeep trench which is then lined with a geo-textile. A perforated plastic drain pipe isinserted and the trench refilled with smallsized stone known as ‘pea gravel’. A sump,also made of plastic pipe, is constructed atintervals to enable water to be pumped out.The fact was though that very little pumpingwas necessary and then only to lower thegroundwater levels rather than to dispose ofrainwater. The other two parts of the digginggang’s task was shaping the sloping banks ofthe channel, and building about 80m of bankwhere none existed. The latter is in thecentre of the length near the culvert. Twoslopes had to be formed – one about threemetres long on the offside and a smallerversion on the towpath side. Each had to beshaped accurately to provide the profile ofthe finished channel. As with all jobs practicemade perfect. The spoil from the excavationwas moved by dumper to the site of the newbank, and spread in layers and compacted.Care was taken to make sure that the bankwas constructed to more or less its finished

slope so as to minimise the amount of sub-sequent work necessary. It is fair to say thatprogress on all parts of the earthmovingexceeded all expectations during the yearwith well over 100m shaped.

Many of the erstwhile wall-builderswere redeployed onto the work on the tow-path. A new fence was completed along thewhole length. Its design was such that workcould be done on the towpath without ad-justing the position of the fence. The othereffect was to make the towpath into a morewalker and cycle friendly corridor, judgingfrom the many complimentary comments ofpeople from both groups. The surface of thepath also received attention. In the firstinstance it was thoroughly weeded. If anyonehas doubts about the dedication of the Soci-ety’s volunteers this should dispel it, sincethe task involved kneeling on the roughstone surface and removing the offendingplants by hand! The final task was surfacingwith stone dust dressing and rolling thesurface. This job was in fact finished aboutone hour before knocking-off time on thelast day in November. The rolled stone dustis a very effective surface as demonstrated bythe fact that completed sections are still, atthe time of writing, in pristine conditionundamaged by foot or cycle traffic.

And finally, the bit we had all beenwaiting for, the lining of the channel. Twosmall lengths of channel were lined in 2008(at Redwith Bridge) and last year (at Pryce’sBridge), but these were, respectively, a trialand a demonstration. In October we did thefirst ‘production run’ of lining. The work partygot off to a hectic start with the arrival of 2trucks carrying 2000 concrete blocks. Alsoarriving was a mini-bus carrying 17 personnelfrom RAF Shawbury. Each course run atShawbury undertakes a community day andwe benefited from the combined muscle of No386 Joint Air Traffic Control Course. The resultof this was to smash the record for attendanceon a single day with 44 people on site. Justover 15m of channel at the Pryce’s Bridgeend was lined and it is fair to say that byclose of play on Sunday there were somevery tired volunteers on site. However thistask will, like all the others we have tackled,speed up as our accumulated experienceguides us to improved working methods.

So, those are the highlights of a resto-ration year that has been both successful andgreat fun. Roll on 2012.

David Carter

page 36

Lichfield Canal

Darnford Park (where the canal is beingdiverted to facilitate crossing the A51 andA38 main roads) is still the main focus ofactivity. Trust volunteers have been workingin co-operation with Lichfield District toprepare for the diversion of the foul sewerwhich is the essential first stage towardsbuilding the new channel. Only preliminaryforestry management can be undertakenuntil the District Council has sanctioned thefull scheme. There are planning issues underconsideration, and applications for fundingare in an advanced stage of preparation. Asever, there must be many hours spent indiscussion and negotiation before work canbe started on the ground.

Engineering sketches have been pre-pared for the proposed tunnels under bothA5 and A51. Even though such work is notin immediate prospect it is essential that weknow the correct alignments for the channelconstruction in the park which should startthis year. Four trial pits have been dug and asandstone base reached. Design of the lockstaircase will probably be modelled on theDroitwich experience.

We still hope to complete the purchaseof the track from Cappers Bridge to aboveLock 30 in the near future. These discus-sions have taken far longer than expectedmostly because it has been difficult to estab-lish the exact boundaries from the vendor.Thought has also been given to the pilingaround the lift-bridge where trial rewatering

took place severalyears ago. The cul-vert will also needfurther investigationand remedial work.Lock 25 and pound26 also still requirefurther work to en-sure water retention.Detailed discussionswith the EnvironmentAgency are on-goingto resolve floodwatercontrol and waterextraction rights.

We continue tomonitor any possibleimplications that thebuilding of the HS2high speed rail routemight have on thecanal. Although thecurrent plans showno threat to therestored waterwayclose attention will bepaid to the detailedconstruction planswhen these becomeavailable.

ProgressLichfield Canal

On the Lichfield, they’re

digging holes in the park

as the first stage of a

diversion to get the canal

under two main roads...

Lichfield Canal

Huddlesford

to Lichfield

To Coventry

To Fradley

HuddlesfordJunction

To Ogley

Lichfield

CoventryCanal

Tamworth Road Locks24-26: current mainworksite is below locks

A51

A38

Planned diversion viatwo new road bridgesand staircase locks

Original routeobstructed

DarnfordPark

2526

27-8

2930

24

Cappers Lane

Liftbridge site

page 37

River Gipping

The relatively warm and dry start to thewinter period has been a great help, andeven the later cold snap has only affectedone Wednesday work party, when tempera-tures got too cold for bricklaying.

We are still concentrating our efforts onthe repair of the ac-commodation bridge atPipps Ford, nearNeedham Market, andhave now pretty muchcompleted rebuildingone of the fourspandrel walls. Workhas now started onthe re-build of a sec-ond wall, and clearingaway damaged brick-work from the remain-ing walls. We have alsostarted to clear thebridge deck itself of anaccumulation of soiland roots.

This has shownthe deck is not sobadly deteriorated aswe had feared, but theoriginal steel handrails are corrodedand bent away from shape, and wewill need to decide whether it isfeasible to repair these, or morelikely remove them and replace witha timber substitute.

Meanwhile Saturdayworkparties continue with finishingoff at Baylham Mill. We have beenasked by the owner of the mill to re-construct the old sluice mechanism,and we are awaiting the agreementof the Environment Agency to ourplans before we can move aheadwith this. It looks to be an excitingproject. We plan to replace the de-cayed wooden frame with localgrown native oak, and have had a

ProgressRiver Gipping

...while on the Gipping

Baylham Mill Lock and Pipps

Ford Lock Bridge continue

to receive attention from

local volunteers

very helpful offer from a local landowner toprovide the timber and working premises tofabricate the structure. Subject to obtainingthe necessary approvals, this should be ournext major project , through the Autumn of2012

Martin BirdRestoration Manager, River Gipping Trust

Above: the bridge at Pipps Ford Lock under repairBelow: the sluice to be rebuilt at Baylham Mill Lock

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page 38

DumpersSay ‘no’ to dodgy brakes!

Bungle reminds us that (whatever

the old hands might say) dumpers

should have working brakes - and

introduces some new driver

authorisation categories

Important information on dumpers

Over the last year we have had a couple ofincidents reported with dumpers. One of thecommon factors was after the event some-one saying “yes, we noticed that problemearlier”. It is important that if you find aproblem with any item of kit you report itand if it is safety related (brakes on adumper for example) you STOP USING ITuntil the problem is fixed.

Brakes

A particular issue is people expecting olderequipment to be in poor condition. Justbecause a dumper is old does not mean itshould have ineffective brakes: 1960s twowheel drive Winget dumpers can have veryeffective brakes as long as they are lookedafter. If you get on one and it won’t stop

properly, park it up and make sure no-oneuses it until they are fixed.

And while we are on the subject, it isimportant that you make sure the brakeswork BEFORE you need them rather thanafter you have set off down the slope...

That is not to say that just because some-thing is shiny it is in good mechanical condi-tion. New equipment needs to be looked afterand checked just as much as older kit.

So in summary: all equipment needs tobe maintained to a safe standard, no matterwhat its age. If you find something unsafe,don’t use it.

New categories

On a related subject, we will shortly berevising the dumper categories on the WRGDriver Authorisation scheme. Currentlycategory 8a covers two wheel drive dump-

Under 7 tonne artic: was 8b, now 25Rear steer dumper: was category 8a, now 24

page 39

ers; 8b is four wheel drive dumpers under 7tonnes; and 8c is four wheel driver dumpersover 7 tonnes AND rear tipping dumpers.

When we set the scheme up, the smalltwo wheel drive dumpers were very commonand the majority of people being trainedeither started on them, or at least had accessto one to gain experience before or at thesame time as getting the 8b qualification.Likewise, we rarely saw dumpers over 7tonnes and anyone driving one had probablydriven one of the rear tip machines that wereabout at the time.

This is no longer the case. So we willbe dropping category 8 altogether and intro-ducing three new categories:

24 Rear steer dumpers These are theold school, normally (but not necessar-ily) two wheel drive machines, e.g.Winget 2s, Thwaites Nimline etc.

25 Articulated steer forward tippingdumpers These are the standard fourwheel drive dumpers that are now mostcommonly used on sites, indeed mostoperators will now not have seen anyother type. You will notice that we areno longer distinguishing between over/under 7 tonnes; we have taken the view

that the operating principles are thesame. Obviously (as with any other bitof kit) if you are not comfortable driv-ing larger models, then just because itis on your ticket doesn’t mean you haveto drive it. Just say “no”.

26 Rear tipping wheeled dumpers.These are now their own category; thisis not the same as tracked dumpers(which may be rear tipping) whichalready have their own category (23 ifyou are interested).

If you have category 8 on your ticket you willshortly be getting a letter from Head Officeasking you to re-apply for whichever cat-egory of dumpers that you are competent in.From the beginning of the main summercamps season (30th June 2012) category 8will no longer be valid on any of our sites.

As ever, if you would like training on aparticular item of plant or just a refresher ifyou haven’t used something for some time,whether it be dumpers or any other plant,get in contact with us and we will arrangesomething either at the training weekend oron a local site.

George [email protected]

Over 7 tonne artic: was 8c, now 25 Rear tip: was 8c, now 26

page 40

Rebuilding a mixer - part 5

Ah yes, the mixer. Yes its still moving on,albeit rather slowly.

I guess the best place to start is tofollow directly on from the end of the lastreport, where I was starting to fabricate thesteel channel and angle iron that will formthe new cross-head (this is the piece thatcarries the swivel pin for steering the mixer).

Having tack welded all of the piecestogether I arranged for a company near meto fully weld it all together; I had also addeda piece of round steel to help support thespindle that the steering pivots in. Thefinished item was then bolted into place inthe main chassis and also welded to thesupport struts. I haven’t done much weldingfor quite a few years so this part was quite achallenge, using both electric arc and tig.

The rim of the mixing drum had a piecemissing, and so whilst the welding kit wasavailable I formed a piece of suitable bar(really a piece of reinforcing bar) and weldedthat into place using the tig machine.

The next task was to grease and fit the

bearings onto the input drive shaft. Becauseof their type I had to ensure that they werepressed-in in the correct order otherwisethey can be pushed apart. I had managed toreclaim one of the bearings as I stripped themachine. This casting, complete with gearand input shaft was then bolted to the mainchassis.

I then turned my attention to the cast-ing at the other end of the mixer. This incor-porates an internal gear and a small pinion,that, when the large hand wheel is operatedthe drum can be up-ended in order for themix to be tipped out.

This casting has two semi-circular flatpieces of steel to cover the gearing, butwhen I came to bolt these into place only afew of the screws lined up correctly. Ichecked some of the photos (no, not Sepia)that I had taken when I first took on the taskof reconditioning the mixer, only to find thatthe guard wasn’t properly fitted at that time,and presumably had always been like it.

The small fixing brackets were cut offand repositioned. Where the threads hadbeen stripped these were either welded up

and re drilled or justopened up to the nextconvenient size.

One of thelongitudinal 4” x 3”channels that supportthe drum bearingblock was bolted intoplace to ensure thatthe two end castingswere correctlyaligned.

I have nowpressed the bearingsonto the drum shaftand fitted the supportcasting. Once againthese were given agood load of greaseand fitted in thecorrect order becausethey are of a similar

PlantRebuilding a diesel mixer

John has now completed

the stripping down and

rebuilding work and

progressed on to

reassembling the mixer

Pic

ture

s by J

ohn H

aw

kin

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page 41

to those on the input shaft.The next major task will be to find the

best and safest method to lift the drum,complete with the bearings and casting.Unfortunately I cannot reverse the strip-down process - largely because the bearingsare now all complete on the drum.

If that doesn’t work then I‘ve a got aneven bigger problem… but that’s all in thefuture.

John Hawkins

Opposite page:the new crossheadto support theswivel pin forsteering the mixeris fabricated fromangle iron andchannel. Above:the crosshead hasbeen fixed in placeand the mixerchassis is sup-ported on a jackwhile it is loweredonto the swivelpin. Aboveright: the tow barhas been re-attached. Below:the drum receiv-ing attention priorto re-fitting -assuming Johnworks out how todo it!

page 42

Hollingwood?What’s that, then?The Hollingwood Common Canal

Not to be confused with the HollinwoodCanal (a branch of the Ashton to the east ofManchester) this is Hollingwood with a ‘g’, inDerbyshire. The following report has beenadapted from the Chesterfield Canal Trust’smagazine The Cuckoo.

Over the winter our Chesterfield CanalTrust Work Party have been scrub-bashing atHollingwood, and in the process they haverevealed part of the Hollingwood CommonCanal. This was an underground canal thatran for nearly two miles beneath what is nowthe Hollingwood Estate and Ringwood Hall toWestwood. It was a mine canal (like those atWorsley on the Bridgewater Canal) used tobring out coal. It was not connected to themain Chesterfield Canal; in fact where itemerged from its tunnel and met the Ches-terfield it was at a different level, one footlower. The coal was trans-shipped from the21ft canal tunnel boats to the full-sized 70ftboats on the main canal at a wharf. This wason the old line of the Chesterfield Canal,before the 1892 cut was built as one of aseries of diversions in connection with theconstruction of the Great Central Railway. Itis on this new cut that the present day re-stored Hollingwood Lock lies.

It was reported in 1811 that ‘The tunnelis six foot high, five feet nine inches widewith two foot of water The boats are twentyone foot long, three feet six inches wide andhold seven cones or boxes containing twentyto twenty two hundredweight of coal each’;although it is also reported that originally itwas dug for ironstone, not coal.

There are very few traces of theHollingwood Common Canal on the surfacenow, but the tunnel is still there. The photoshows what the Work Party has exposed. It ison the offside bank, on the opposite side ofWorks Road Bridge (no. 8C) fromHollingwood Lock. There used to be a line ofcapped air shafts going right up Private Drivewhich showed where the tunnel was. Thereis now only one left. It is in the scrub be-

tween the bottom of Private Drive andTroughbrook Road.

Since being uncovered by the workparty, the Coal Authority have been doingfurther works on the entrance to the under-ground canal. This is their report to theChesterfield Canal Trust.

“I just thought I would keep you up-dated re the above mine entry. Our contrac-tors earlier in the week cleared the silt fromthe ditch outbye of the adit and were able toreduce the water level by about 400mmexposing more of the adit. The adit entrancehas also been cleared of vegetation in readi-ness for our bricklayers to return to makegood the masonry and fix a permanent grille,when weather conditions permit. On comple-tion, the immediate area around the aditmouth, where there are vertical falls, willreceive a post and rail security fence. Hope-fully these completed works will be visiblefrom the canal towpath for all to view.”

Top to bottom: as found by CCT; exposed bythe Coal Authority; the surviving capped shaft

Pic

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page 43

WRG BC news March 2012

By now you will all have voted for the PrivateBoater representatives for the Canal & RiverTrust Council. At least I hope you have. Nowwe look forward to the results. What a clubwe are with no fewer than THREE membersstanding as candidates. I think this is arecord – more than any other boat club.

Congratulations and best wishes tothose willing to take on such a task.

Luckily there are those willing to com-mit themselves to such voluntary work. TheMidlands Region of AWCC has found such aperson in Ian Wood the new regional chair-man. Any member out there willing to takeon a job as club officer? We need all the helpwe can get!

Does British Waterways have your e-mail address? They are about to launch aboat owners’ survey. They will send out e-mails to a random sample of boaters (5000).Each one will contain a link to the onlinesurvey that can only be used once and onlyfrom that e-mail address.

Boaters will be asked ‘a range of ques-tions, from how helpful customer serviceshave been to what are ‘must-haves’ at amooring site.’

Will they ask about the state of locks,dredging, towpaths, water levels, leaks etcetc? I wonder…..

In June there will be the Royal JubileeCavalcade/Flotilla/Pageant but sadly norepresentative of ‘possibly the best boat clubon the cut’ as all the spaces allocated fornarrow boats have been filled by others.

Cruising this year: We are hoping togo to Droitwich this Easter, if the Severn isbehaving. This Navvies News won’t be pub-lished in time for me to invite others to join us.

There will be a boat gathering inDroitwich as part of the Summer Festival,Friday 22 to Monday 25 June. If anyonefrom the club goes to this please let meknow.

It has been suggested that club mem-bers might like to go during July. We havegot Lynx on dock, for bottom blacking, atStourbridge towards the end of July, if youare in the area please do drop by, we havespare brushes!

Whenever you can manage it please tryto go to Droitwich as the more the newlyreopened bits are used the better they get,

Where else this year? Have youbooked to go to the Montgomery for the

Maesbury Festival? Please do. If that isn’tpossible come by car, horse, cycle or W.H.Y.Dates 1-2 September, entrance to festivalFREE but of course you pay to book in yourboat. The club AGM will be held there, andprofits from the festival help with restorationof the Mont.

Go to Middlewich Folk and BoatFestival on 15-17 June and support WRGNW on their stall. Always bargains to befound.

I shall be attending the AWCC AGM in afew days’ time. I shall be collecting somecopies of their handbook. Please let me knowif you want me to send you one by post.

New Members: anyone wishing tojoin WRG Boat Club, (probably the best boatclub on the cut), get in touch with me or anyclub officer, giving a postal address so I cansend an application form.

Membership is open to active volun-teers with Waterway Recovery Group andthose who have previously been involved inworking with the group.

A joining fee of £10 is payable (plus 1year subscription) by new members.

xxx Sadie [email protected]

01733 204505 or mobile 07748186867

WRG BCNews from our boat club

Heading for the Droitwich this year?

Mart

in L

udgate

page 44

ObituaryCrick Grundy

Crick (Christopher) Grundy1926 - 2011

We oldies amongst the Navvies readership cannot letthe passing of Crick go without comment. He wasalways (I am told) called Crick, thus his real name isin brackets here; and this is indicative of the man’sapproach to others. Graham Palmer, a tetchy indi-vidual at times, was heard to say “What’s wrong with‘Mr’; I don’t care what his last job was” when toldthat Major Grundy was the man at PackwoodHouse that the National Trust has put in charge, notonly of the House, but also the Southern StratfordCanal. It did not take long for us all to realise thatCrick worked co-operatively, and was a long wayfrom the ‘officer class’ of person that Graham, and I,were a bit wary of.

We were impressed by his general canalknowledge, not just the ordinary stuff that every hirerlearns after a while, but how the canal is built andmaintained. Latterly I found out that his boatingstarted with Mum, Dad and younger brother in 1938when he was 12 or so. No weekend boaters these –they boated with Tom & Angela Rolt on thethen more or less derelict Llangollen Canal in’47-48. He continued his active canal life intoadulthood campaigning for the Stourbridge,Dudley Tunnel, Aylesbury and Basingstoke.Small wonder that he knew his stuff!

Crick remained an adherent of RobertAickman, the founder of IWA, at a time whenthe leadership of the Association was horriblysplit; and amongst others these two plus DavidHutchings drove the Upper Avon restorationto a successful conclusion. On the Avon hewas a backroom boy as he was running theStratford Canal as well as Packwood House,but it is good to remember him on the bows ofthe narrow boat carrying the Queen Mother atthe reopening in 1974. (I was there!) Thesethree successfully managed a river that hadbeen derelict for 100 years, riparian ownersnot used to being challenged and a WaterAuthority who were inclined to say ‘no’ toeverything.

On the Southern Stratford from 1966,just 2 years after it was reopened, he wasdistinctly at the sharp end. There were only 3

staff, so it is not surprising that he had to be a handson manager, both mending all the things that boaterscan break and fighting against the minimalist restora-tion that I mentioned in my previous review of thecanal a couple of years ago (Navvies 238). So onesees that Crick managed the House, the canal andthe river all at the same time.

We worked on the canal every winter from thevery early ’70s on a variety of jobs, but WRG spentthree whole winters working on the Wilmcote flightdoing an enormous number of things, and not onlydid Crick trust us to use the considerable amount ofcash that it cost, but oiled the wheels to help it allhappen. This against a background of just too fewresources.

I have put together these few notes about howmuch we owe the man, glossing over Council mem-ber for IWA and that he was a founder memberanyway; but the fact that he managed to go canalcampaigning whilst he was still in the army. In 1951he won a Military Cross in Korea for his part in a 7week engagement where it was said that he “…hadinfluenced the whole battle.” One has to say that heinfluenced the whole of the waterways movement inhis quiet way, but few people now would haveknown him.

It is fitting that our photograph shows the threeold soldiers of the IWA, Aickman, Hutchings andGrundy; together with a possibly recognisable ladywho showed great interest in their work. Sadly Crickwas the last to survive, and died last November.

Mike Day

On the Avon 1 June 1974. Robert Aickman seated,David Hutchings behind him, Crick Grundy behindHM Queen Mother. One assumes the fourth manto be HM’s detective, and not just a stowaway.

Harr

y A

rnold

/ W

ate

rway I

mages

page 45

Bits & piecesRestoration in Venice!

What’s this, then?

It might look like a scouring pad but it’sactually IWA Restoration Committee’sVaughan Welch demonstrating the miraclecanal lining material which (we hope) willmake waterproofing canals easier (see p5and p27-28). Terraseal by H&M ChemPharmis a non-woven geotextile fabric, pre-coatedwith Sahara water-based polymeric fluid, tomake a self-healing puncture resistant water-proof lining that’s lighter, cheaper and needsless cover over it than the Bentonite mattingwe’ve been using. Book on a Mont camp thissummer and find out if it works!

Another canal opening soon!

OK only another 50 metres, but once they’vesorted out a few leaks the next bit of the AshbyCanal is ready to open - and there are hopesof substantial funding for the next mile or soto Illott Wharf. Here’s the new length...

Watch out, Birmingham...

...la Serenissima may be catching up on youwhen it comes to miles of navigable canal.Above is the canal on Torcello, one of Venice’sneighbouring islands, looking weedy, over-grown and forlorn when we visited in 1994;below is the same canal seen fully restoredearlier this year, with (inset) the plaquecommemorating completion of restoration ofthe Ponte del Diavolo (Devil’s Bridge).

All p

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res

by M

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page 46

Thanksto Chris Griffiths of Stroudprint for continued

assistance with Navvies cover printing

Congratulationsto

Elly and Chad Reedon the arrival of

Ethan Luke Laurence Reedon 18 March

also toLynette and Rob Daffern

on the arrival of Annabel on 13 March and to

Nerina and Tunji Faleyeon the arrival of a baby boy

on 21 March

Dial-a-camp

To contact any WRGCanal Camp:

07850 422156(Kit ‘A’ camps)07850 422157(Kit ‘B’ camps)

Stamps

wantedSend used stamps,petrol coupons, phonecards, empty computerprinter ink cartridges toIWA/WRG Stamp Bank,33 Hambleton Grove,Milton Keynes MK42JS. All proceeds tocanal restoration.

Inglesham Update

The IWA Inglesham LockAppeal to raise funds toenable WRG volunteers torestore this crucial lockwhere the Cotswold Ca-nals meet the Thames hadraised almost £83,000 to-wards the £125,000 targetas we went to press, andIWA had launched a finalpush to raise enough tokeep us busy this summer.To support the appeal see:www.inglesham.org.uk

Contacting thechairman:

Mike Palmer,3 Finwood Rd, RowingtonWarwickshire CV35 7DH

Tel: 01564 785293

email:[email protected]

Boxmoor...

...festival (Wendo-ver Arm Trust’sreplacement for theTring event) hashad to be cancelled- so BITM won’t begoing there afterall. Sorry.

Directory updatesThe Thames & Medway Canal Association

has a new contact Brian Macknish, Chairman,Meadow View, Hodsell Street, Sevenoaks TN15

7LA, email: [email protected],website www.thamesmedway.co.uk

The Well Creek Trust is a new entry in thedirectory: contact Secretary Mrs C Day, 1 The

Tramways, Outwell PE14 8PZ, email:[email protected]

Wendover Arm Trust contact Roger Leish-man’s email address is [email protected]

The next full directory will appear in issue 254.Please send any updates to the editor.

Attention WRG drivers with tachograph cardsThis affects WRG drivers with digital tacho cards - whichgenerally means those who tow trailers with WRG vehicles.The UK tachograph card authority has become aware of anissue with digital Driver cards issued between 24 Mar 07 and31 Aug 08 malfunctioning. The security certificates in themicrochip incorrectly expired on 23 March 2012 even thoughthe validity date displayed on the front of the cards wascorrect. The authority is working as fast as possible to issuenew cards to those affected.The UK enforcement bodies are exercising discretion inenforcement activity with the 15 day period in which a drivercan drive without a card, but the driver must keep recordsusing the print out facility on the Vehicle Unit.Contact George Eycott on [email protected] with any queries.

page 47

Wanted: a WRG Mission Statement...

A recent discussion on this subject on a London WRG dig came up with the following threesuggestions. If you can think of something better...

...then we wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Scenes you seldom see on a dig: No 15

“OK, that’s the chairman’s page finished, I wonder what people are going to send me for the rest of this issue...”

InfillDear Deirdre I’m running a dig on theThames Berks & Andover Canal shortlyand I’m a little nervous about the localpolitics. Is there anything that I should beaware of?

- Steven, IpswichDeirdre writes: The Thames Berks & Andover is a perfectly normal restoration project, iecompletely riddled with local politics, factionalism, blood feuds and nimbyism. Thereís reallynothing to be worried about though. Just encourage your volunteers to respect the site bounda-ries and avoid crossing into neighbouring fields, where the local landowner may be waiting witha loaded shotgun and a damn good lawyer. Also avoid antagonising any members of the Anti-TBA Canal Trust (motto: ìGeddorfmylaní!î) by doing anything like, uh, restoring the canal. Re-member red is the colour of anger, so avoid wearing anything of that colour, and try not to makeany noise or smoke whilst you go about your business. If all else fails the UN assure me they canbring in peacekeepers really quickly, so Iím sure everything will be fine.

Do you have a question for Deirdre? Just email [email protected]

page 48

If they can do this at the west end...

...you can help us do it at the east end

If they can do this at the west end...

...you can help us do it at the east end

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