London WRG’s first joint dig with the newest mobile group in WRG.

Friday

Arrived quite early at the pub and met up with WRG-SW for dinner and rugby, Argentina proceeded to run France into the grass. The rest of London WRG rolled in over time and a number of beers were consumed. Accom was the always-nice Selsey Scout hut (custodian of the finest accommodation view in canal restoration) where toast was consumed.

Saturday

Martin disappeared early to go to a ResCom meeting near Lincoln, Harri T fed us a good breakfast and Rick B went over the plan for the day and a brief safety talk – the plan being “if its made out of wood and on the old canal, burn it.”

Once on site (we were working at Gough's Orchard lock near Brimscombe Port where the Stroudwater canal used to meet the Thames & Severn) we split into two teams. Helena, Young Chris and I worked with the BW chainsaw man who was felling the larger trees near the road end of site. The rest of the combined group were working nearer the lock clearing scrub and felling smaller trees. By lunch we had a number of good fires going and site was looking much smarter. The locals group (Cotswold Canal Trust) by this point were going great guns with putting up a wooden fence along the old lock while we continued to scrub bash away.

By 5pm everyone was starting to flag – so we headed back to the accom to find James Butler, Moose and Maria had arrived. Showers(!) and dinner (an excellent Lasagne and chocolate pudding by Harri) quickly followed and we managed to make the pub in time for the England v South Africa rugby match. With the rugby match being shown in the lower bar we had the middle bar to ourselves, keeping score by the cheers and groans from the room next door.

Sunday

An extra early breakfast is never the nicest thing on a Sunday (we had to be clear of the hall by 9.30am) but everyone set to and we were soon on site. We had a new BW chainsaw operator today and soon started to remove the final few trees. These being quite close to some workshops, a degree of control over the felling was required – attaching a Tirfor to the tree and applying some tension as the trunk was cut seemed to work well, pity the BW chainsaw gave up after two trees! This led to the alternate method of felling trees – cut the wedge, saw halfway through and then winch it over. By 3pm the only things left standing on site were the piles of logs and a few trees that required the use of an access platform to cut down.

All in all a very good scrub bash, nice to be working on the Cotswold Canals again after so many years. Thanks to Rick B for organising the dig and to Harri T for the cooking, see everyone at Bonfire Bash!

Ed Walker