I left work Friday with laughter ringing in my ears. My colleagues found it hilarious that I was choosing to spend my two days outdoors. I was also dubious about the weather forecast. The laughs got louder when I reached Waterloo early. Everyone else had arrived even earlier and they were hidden in the minibus. A couple of calls summed up that Aileen was on her way and Andi was in Colchester.

The journey was smooth and since we had no keys to the accommodation, we sadly ended up in the pub with the bonus of extra drinking time. Needless to say, the pub was drunk dry of Pride. Pete Redway discussed the work for the dig.

On Saturday morning Tunji woke us before Bob had the chance. The first casualty of the day occurred before we left for site when Aileen filled a cup with boiling water and it split. We though Ed had taken the minibus keys to site but Martin found them in the hall so it was time to get to work.

There were three teams: pipe layers, people who dug holes and refilled them (for entertainment? – No, bywash position and leakage checks – Ed.) and ballast shovellers who laid the towpath. On the way to fill the first of several dumperfuls by hand, we were greeted by the sight of Matt dancing YMCA or Macarena for Nigel on the top of a heap of ballast. It turned out Matt was teaching EIWE (Excavator Instruction Without Excavator).

So far the weather was overcast but dry. Nigel filled our second dumperful while Martin showed Sally and Richard Cool how to use the roller, prompting yet more smutty jokes. The pipes arrived for the pipelayers who were in discussion around what appeared to be a hole surrounded by piling.

During lunch it began to rain after a cheeky five minutes of sunshine. We went back to shovel another dumperful of ballast by hand. Martin optimistically told us it would brighten up soon. To be fair it did brighten up (at ten to six as we were packing up), by which time we’d lost count of how many times he’d tried to convince us.

Sally and I navigated the dumper with sand to the pipe layers. On our return a man in a white van nearly collided with us, clearly mesmerised that hard hats also fit girls’ heads. Matt’s desired location for the sand meant that we couldn’t get the dumper past so the next load of ballast was barrowed back and forth by Rick and Richard. This load was man handled three times instead of the usual two we were used to. Rick took to the roller and the job was over for the day.

Lesley and Nigel’s hole digging team had to refill their hole. The pipelayers laid one piece of pipe. The trench was so deep Ed almost couldn’t be seen. Richard Thomas and Dave came back to the accommodation looking like they’d been swimming in a mud bath. Unfortunately for them there was no shower.

Jenny cooked a fabulous meal and we followed tradition by revisiting the pub where we found a new word puzzle – DGE (Deliberate Grammatical Errors).

The first dumper of ballast on Sunday proved challenging, not because our muscles ached but we’d done such a good job Saturday, the heaps of ballast were smaller so reaching the dumper required more strength. Rick kept singing a coal mining song.

We filled in a crater that Marcus had rolled for us down at lock 8. Nigel came to our rescue by filling the dumper for us only for us to find it required manual emptying. We were still handling ballast twice over. Sally’s “Shovelometer” reached 42 tonnes by the time we completed the towpath.

The pipelayers got their second pipe in and Bob used the wackerplate while Matt played with the excavator. The rain held off, but flirted with us, all day.

All that remains is to thank Ed for organising the weekend and Jenny for feeding us so well.

Natalie Parker

And the view from the trenches:

“It’s the Basingstoke, we must be pipe laying again, yes?” pretty much the conversation I had with Pete Redway before the dig, the only advantage being we were laying backpump pipes which are steel and less easily nadgered. Saturday was hard going, some of us were on site by 8.45am, Marcus led off the survey team to look at bywashes while Matt and I started on backpump pipes. We dealt with the remnants of the “interesting” job that Newbury had getting the last piece of pipe in and started trenching.

While we were grubbing around in the trench, Marcus was doing a mole impression at lock 8 and found that the ominous depression in the lock side was caused by that common Basingstoke disease, “leaky bywash,” think we will be fixing that one on the summer camp!

Matt and I went on a site visit for the summer camp in the afternoon (seemed a reasonable excuse to get out of the rain!) and when we got back we were almost ready to lay the first pipe section. This went in with a lot less effort than had been foreseen, these smaller pipes are far easier to handle than the big bywash pipe we fitted last time. After backfilling with sand and levelling off we realised that it was 8pm and if we did not make it back sharpish we would be turned into tomorrows breakfast by Jenny!

Sunday came off with far fewer problems as everyone knew what we had to do and we had a fresh site to work on. The Saturday pipe was backfilled; a new length of trench dug, piled and the second pipe section of the weekend went in after lunch. Backfilling and tidying up led us to 6pm and we realised it was time to go.

A very busy dig with a lot of manual work, probably explains why I was accompanied by a chorus of snores as I drove back into London! Thanks to everyone who took part.

Ed Walker