A relatively large number of London WRG'ies hit the "Bleak House" pub on the Friday night to find that the closest approximation to real ale was still Guinness. Meeting up with Pete Redway we found out that the main job for the weekend was putting in more back pump pipe sections and tarting up Lock 11.

On site the next day, a team lead by Moose and Maria started work on pouring some more concrete around the outlet weir to strengthen the structure, the only problem being that all the mud had to be dug out first. Sometime latter success was declared by a number of mud splattered navvies and the pour started.

At the other end of the lock, progress was slower. The excavator supplied for the pipe laying job had come with too large a digging bucket and a four foot deep trench had to be hand dug between the concrete around the bywash pipe and the fibre optic conduit. Much hand digging later and the previous pipe section was found but offering up the next section showed up another problem, the concrete around the bywash would have to be trimmed back. It now being quite late we decided to put that off to the next day.

In the middle of site the rest of the group including Alex (a new volunteer) did some landscaping and started to re-lay the towpath.

Crawling back to Woodham Church Hall that night we were treated to a chicken stew courtesy of Lesley and Maria and headed off to "The Plough" in Byfleet for a couple of pints of "flat cap" and "squashed rat and warthog", thanks to Daryl for driving us to the pub and for recovering Martin after the ResCom meeting.

The next day on site was wetter than the first, with the concreteing finished the landscpaing was accelerated and by the end of the day a nice towpath ran the length of the lock. Back down the trench the application of Dave Miller, Martin and a Kango soon dealt with the obstructing concrete and the first pipe section was connected up, leveled out using a laser level and filled in again. Another section of pipe was then emplaced and and a temporary towpath surface poured.

All in all, a constructive dig with a lot of useful work done, we would have got a lot more pipe laid though if we hadn't had so much trouble with the fibre optic conduit!

Ed Walker