I shall start with the ‘Thank Yous’, to Harri T for all the cooking, shopping and clearing up, to Marcus for helping out with the ‘technical’ stuff and local liaison, to Stella and Graham for looking after us so well over the weekend. Hot bacon butties and burgers on site – what a way to treat your visiting work parties. It was so nice to have them join us on Saturday evening, too. Also to all who came to the dig.

The dig was sheduled for the Wey and Arum when I agreed to organise, but as so often happens, it got changed to the Derby Canal, Borrowash Bottom Lock to be precise. LWRG hadn’t worked on this Canal for many, many years, and then not in this location. The canal runs around the back of Borrowash between the houses and the railway. The Top lock has been buried under a grassy knoll, but the Bottom lock is open to the vagaries of the weather and the local ‘oaks’ so our work for the weekend was to tidy up the site, lay some bricks for the wing wall and point up some of the chamber walls, with the longer term plan that the wing walls, in particular would be completed for the winter, whilst efforts were put into other parts of the canal.

We had a good turn out of LWRGies from around the country, (Northeast, Wales, South West, Essex as well as London). Jon celebrated the sale of his boat and the imminent arrival of his child by providing sausages (!) for the weekend. Added to those already bought, we had sausages for breakfast, cold in sandwiches for lunch, sausage casserole for dinner, sausages for breakfast and sausage sandwiches for Sunday lunch. I’m not sure who took the rest home!!

While the scaffolders played Meccano with the scaffolding poles and planks, the rest of us started the chamber clearance and cutting back the ‘jungle’ around the access slope to the chamber. This gave us access to the wing walls and we stared on the necessary clearing up of the loose brickwork prior to the rebuild. It was interesting rebuilding a wall that not only curved away, but curved back as well. Some of us worked on smaller holes in the brickwork while others pointed up. The chamber was cleared on rubbish, with care taken over rescuing the local fauna, depositing it in a safer place.

We stayed at Shardlow Village Hall, with a large car park and sports field alongside. It was also conveniently situated close to at least three pubs, within easy walking distance, some alongside the canal.

As I said before, this was the first time LWRG had worked on the Derby Canal for some while, but I hope it won’t be as long before we are back.