London WRG ventured to far-flung Droitwich on the Friday night of this weekend. Surprisingly the journey took less than 2.5 hours from Waterloo, giving plenty of time for drinks in the Railway, meeting the local organiser (none other than THE Chairman, MKP) and the Burchetts. The surprise of that last meeting stayed with us until the Sunday am, but Roger's strength and Sue's help with the pudding and shopping were much appreciated.

Rather dauntingly there were 5 pages of work instructions, but the local system seemed to be that MKP yelled us into 2 working parties around Lock 2's wing walls at the junction site. The beefier of the party were to move very large stone coping stones and large cast-iron pieces of edging to allow the lambs of the group to remove saplings, roots and earth before the edgings were replaced. This exercise occupied all Saturday and with much difficulty and effort the largest curved piece of cast-iron was at last successfully manoeuvred into place... only to find that a previous working party rebuilding the wall had miscalculated the height of the brick courses! The edging was heaved off and bricks removed.

Then disaster struck: this time the manoeuvre failed, the edging overbalanced and crashed into the lock with seemingly no easy way of retrieval without the aid of an army helicopter. (Those with influence please contact MKP).

Saturday was also the day when quite a few locals came to work on or near the lock. They - rather disconcertingly for the caterer - came with expectations of drinks and lunch. Drinks were offered, but not food until the next day when they'd decided they'd better bring their own sarnies. London WRG's kit didn't stretch to a mug each, especially when they were getting smashed, [that's the mugs that were getting smashed, not London WRG ...Ed] but thanks to modern technology, a distress call caught Sue at the supermarket checkout, and sent her back in for mugs and coffee supplies.

Sunday the emphasis was on bricklaying the bywash and repointing the walls in the huge brick-bottomed side-pond. The only disasters were the gas running out (therefore no tea!) and the cement mixer not mixing, but Tim and one of the Davids (there were 3) were, so work progressed. Sorry to say the cast-iron edging became a problem for another group another time....