For some of us, the weekend started very early indeed. London WRG’s traditional (is it traditional, Ed?) visit to the Battersea Beer Festival prompted Liz W and Mk2 to claim floor space at Ed’s, and Richard Cool to do likewise at Sally’s, and hit the beerfest on the Thursday. Martin and Lesley also showed up, and we got into the swing of, well, swinging arms with glasses of beer at the end of them!

Friday night (we’ll get to the bit involving canal restoration in a bit, I promise) saw four navvies and four sets of kit cram into Mk2’s SEAT for the journey down to Woodham Village Hall, via an excellent sit-down fish-n-chips in Byfleet. There was an audible pop as Liz and Sal were surgically removed from beneath their backpacks, in the back of the car.

Off to the Bleak House, and true to reputation, the London Pride pumpclip was turned ‘round as we approached the counter. Honestly, the place has been knocked through and extended out so many times that there’s hardly anywhere to sit any more – it’s all corridor. There was Adnams Bitter anyway, but we’d finished that by 10:00 as well, Martin (minus a ‘suffering-at-home’ Lesley) and the rest of the LWRG hard-core having arrived.

Pretty soon, we’ll talk canal restoration. Honest.

Saturday morning and amidst dozing and darkness, Martin’s telephone rings. It was SO tempting to shout out “I’m in the SLEEPING BAG!” It was Matt Taylor, the morning-loving rotter that he is, full of beans (though Jenny Wilson the New Wonder Cook had not by that point started cooking up the beans for our breakfast) and ready to dig. After a hearty (though no real hearts were used in order to provide it) breakfast, we piled into NJF and the Mariamobile and travelled (via a Milton Keynesian number of roundabouts) to site. Three types of jobs awaited us, as did a yard full of local canal volunteers led by the indomitable Pete Redway (Milton Keynes again! Dunno? Look it up). Job type 1: dig out a trench (and thus divide the site in two for the duration) and expose the last pipe laid. Job Type 2: dig out a hole in the bankside for the outlet pipe, pile and backfill. Job Type 3: get the pipes ready for being laid, in the vain hope that we will get around to laying them.

See, I told you canal restoration would come into it soon. As an aside, you all know that the Basingstoke gets very little water – oh, you all know that, let’s get onto the cock-ups and have a laugh at someone else’s expense. Well, there was the pipe-prep team of Mk2, Liz and Rich. They needed to trim the nadgered end off one of the pipes and re-chamfer it with the angle grinder. Mk2 set to with a panel saw. Carefully sawing along the ribbing in the plastic pipe, he realised (but all too late) that the design was in fact a spiral, and once he had completed sawing through the pipe’s complete circumference, found he was about 4 inches away from where he had started! Hasty reparations were made, and much of the afternoon was spent re-making the end of the pipe.

Matt T, meanwhile, was digging a huge hole in the towpath next to the lock entrance with the Volvo excavator. Into this piling was sunk and once the end of the pipe was exposed – Matthew carefully dug out all around it – it was found to be well nadgered. Step in (to the hole) Mk2 with the angle grinder.

The dumper truck was kept busy ferrying the spoil from Matt T’s hole to – er, where WERE you taking it, Sleepy Dave? Sally had a go, too, and had an early stab at the London WRG Driving Award. Having climbed onto the dumper asking “what is the shift pattern?” to be told “it’s on a sticker there”, she got on with it. 2nd instead of reverse and nearly into Matt’s big hole. Sal did the right thing and climbed straight back onto the dumper and continued the job, but she did not take it out of 1st gear until Dave took over again. Dave also nearly did the hole thing later.

Meanwhile, the piling continued. Another hole had been dug into the bankside beneath the lock entrance for the outlet of the Famous Pipe. People like Mk2 and Rich barrowed concrete whilst Sal and Ed worked 19 to the dozen (or rather, 10 shovelfuls of sand to half a bag of cement) making the stuff. People like Mk2 and Rich either showered Matthew and Liz with concrete or nearly followed the heavy barrows down the hole upon finding the ground a bit loose. The piling was perfect – absolutely to plan apart from one missing hole and a need to chop the brace bars in half and clamp them – but the angle grinder was needed to restore the dolly to its original shape after Richard had practiced manual piling upon it with a sledgehammer.

Matt T switched on his worklights and continued digging. The rest of us attempted to clear our toys up and spot the difference between JFH and NJF in the dark. If in doubt, chuck it in JFH and ask questions later. Questions like: “Where’s the whacker plate?”

Back at the accomm, the shower key was declared Not Here, but fortunately, the smell of Jenny-you’re-such-a-good-cook-oh-PLEEEEASE-can-you-make-the-next-dig’s Beef Bourginon comprehensively outdid the smell of not-very-clean navvies.

It being officially Nearly Helen Dobbie’s Birthday, a special cake was brought in with such unblowoutable (new word there) candles that a second cake was brought in with extinguishable pyrotechnic decorations. Happy Birthday was duly sung twice. And so to the Bleak House where the Adnams actually lasted, and the Sunday lunch count stood at zero (ask the landlord). Actually, the Bleak has changed management and the new people seem eager to develop the trade; actually opening on Sundays and laying-in enough Adnams for an LWRG contingent suggests that they are reading the signs!.

Sunday morning and Matt Taylor and Ed Walker have left for site before anyone other than Jenny-your-breakfasts-are-very-nice-so-is-there-any-chance-you-can-make-the-next-dig is up. They have left a note detailing who is on what work site and what jobs are to be expected. Simply put, the work on Sunday followed the same principle as Saturday, ie. one lot go off and scrub-bash whilst the rest stand and stare into a hole of their choice.

At this point, it is worth pointing out that Tim Lewis, who had arrived suspiciously close to dinner time on Saturday night, (a) might take nearly all day to start a fire but once it gets going it consumes everything you feed it and (b) might just have psychic powers. He was definitely heard to ask if there were any kebs on site a few minutes BEFORE his hat fell off and into the cut. Martin, meanwhile, had gone off to light his own fire, and quite possibly won the race to giant, leaping flames.

Helen attempted to rein-in the biscuit-powered human dynamo that is Bob and start the stack-it-up-neatly operation at the scrub-bashing site. Mk2’s comment was that the top end of the site “looks like a Bob’s hit it” and a bizarre round-the-fire discussion on the naming conventions of tropical storms (yeah, yeah, the rest of you can mock but I bet you were just staring into a hole…) very nearly assigned him the nickname “Hurricane Bob”. In the bus on the way back, Bob allowed a moth to escape to freedom (probably followed by a less certain death then being confined to NJF’s interior) and informed everyone that he respects all God’s creatures. Everyone else enquired as to where trees stand. The answer is, of course, that they don’t stand; they get chopped down.

Ed will now, I trust, tell you what was achieved in and around the holes on the Sunday. He might mention Sally’s second stab at the London WRG Driving Award involving the bucket of the mini digger and the bridge handrail, but he may not.

Mk2

[Over to you, Ed!]

Thanks Mark.

The Sunday of the Basingstoke dig started way too early as Matt kicked me awake at sometime before 8am (it was around 0730; and I thought I’d have to the loo to myself at that time! – Mk2) and I wondered about the sanity of volunteering to get to site early; I blame the beer and red wine on Saturday night. Once on site Matt started to extend the trench we started the previous day while I stood in the rain and passed piles as needed. After putting in another four piles we briefly stopped to admire our nice deep trench and realised we didn’t have any more acro props for the new piles. At this point two of the piles collapsed in. These were swiftly pulled and replaced and trenching continued. Just as we reached the right length a white Land Rover was spotted heading onto site…perfect timing. Sally was then mugged for breakfast sandwiches for Matt and I while the rest of the pipe laying team swung into action. The pipe section was quickly soaped and stropped up and lowered into position, but we then ran into the first problem. Pete had the first attempt at keeping an eye on the seal ring and preventing it from kinking as the pipes were fitted together, but after about 2” of winching, the seal irrevocably kinked and the pipe had to be removed. Tea was then delivered and drunk.

After a swift brew break we set up for attempt two on the pipe, this time with yours truly in charge of the seal. All seemed to be going well until a twang was heard from deep in the pipe and the tension went. The rope between the tirfor and the end of the pipe had snapped and shot at high speed towards Steve and Liz who were winch operators. Needless to say they leapt out of the manhole like scared rabbits just before a long length of rope hit the end of the pipe. We rapidly reconfigured to use the excavator instead (which has the drawback of nadgering the end of Mk2’s pipe) and the pipe was pushed back into place with minimal extra trouble. The pipe was emplaced in pea gravel and we decided to break for lunch.

After lunch Matt started to fill in the trench and a concrete collar was poured around the pipe joint. Around this time, Sal made another attempt for the LWRG drivers award as she got the small excavator stuck while trying to drive off the gravel pile. The machine, having less power than GCW, was pulled out using the dumper, possibly the first time I have had to use a dumper to remove a mired excavator!

With darkness falling, most people left site, but Matt, other Matt and I worked on to clear site; the piles were driven around the bywash outfall to prevent any bank erosion and gear was packed. Two dumper loads of road stone were swiftly converted into a towpath by Matt while I cleared up around the spoil heap using the other excavator, which being a bit short in the lights department meant I had to use a head torch!

A very productive dig in quite difficult conditions; thanks to everyone who took part, particularly Jenny Wilson for cooking.

Ed Walker