An interesting weekend this one, an appeal from Rupert and Alison for volunteers to go for a weekend scrub bashing in Froghall. Never one to turn down a challenge I added my name to the rather short list and awaited further instructions.

Friday afternoon I journeyed into London and met Sal at Acton Town where that nice Matt Taylor had offered us a lift to the dig. After a brief food stop at his house and managing to tear ourselves away from the Comic Relief coverage we were off.

After about three hours of driving, several miles of very windy road country lane and a short stroll across the fields we arrived at the local pub where Rupert, Alison, various Fulbourne crew and Tenco were waiting. We were later joined by Clive and Marcus, to add to our select group. After general socialising and catching up we went back to the weekend’s accommodation, Rupert and Alison’s house. A note to the next person who has to book us a place to stay, I know it’s a bit out of the way for most of the places we work but it has hot water, showers, and even beds – though these got taken by Sal and Matt because he was doing breakfast.

Saturday morning I was woken quite abruptly by the large blinds in the room I was in automatically opening at 7. Usually I’m a big fan of this sort of thing but this time it caused much cursing of mornings, blinds, most of the population of the planet and up from there before I hid deeper in my sleeping bag and waiting for breakfast. Baconny smells preceded our usual English breakfast and for the tea drinkers fresh Earl Grey, this should put us level with the coffee drinkers and their camp kit “cafeteria”.

We loaded into the van and set off to site to see what there was to do. We were met by members of the local canal society Julie, Mike and Ivor as well as Graham, the man from BW. We started with some light clearance around the edge and collecting anything that was already there while a bonfire was started and Tenco set up for some larger scale destruction with his chainsaw. We were all very impressed with the abundance of new kit available to us, the sharp bow saws were a shock and work wonderfully after you manage to remove the cardboard. Also in the kit were two new sets of telescoping loppers, again these were great as they were sharp but ask anyone who was there about the trouble we had altering the lengths of the handles. The local canal society had also provided an abundance of cakes for the weekend so everybody was happy during tea breaks and lunch. We received another volunteer at lunchtime, Rick B who called Marcus from the other side of the car park to find out where we were.

The afternoon mainly consisted of trees being cut down by Tenco at one end of the site, dragged to the bonfire, cut up, and burnt. Other activities generally involved trying to get fallen branches and trunks out of the water by hooking then with a rake or pulling them out with a rope.

Once we were all knackered and had made a suitably large hole in the scenery we decided to pack up and go. We loaded up the van and set off back to Rupert and Alison’s, the journey was only interrupted when the hard hat that had been left on one of the van’s wing mirrors decided to fly off, I’m sure it gave Rick a bit of a shock as he was following. Back at the house there was time for a shower and change of clothes before heading off to the pub, the Holly Bush, for dinner courtesy of the canal society. The Beer and Beef Casserole were excellent and everyone else seemed happy with their choices. As is traditional in these situations we managed to run the place out of at least two of its available beers during the evening. We were introduced to the game of “Staffordshire Skittles” which is more difficult than it looks, especially when you have to finish on a low number and continually clear the board. It’s a stupid game anyway and I am in no way bitter.

Sunday morning was lovely and sunny, to the point that even without the huge pile of ash we may have managed spontaneous combustion of the wood. For the entertainment of those watching Matt ventured along a tree that had fallen in the water to cut pieces off the end while I tied rope to them to pull them in, I think that there may have been bets from the shore of who would go in first. Ivor brought a tractor and trailer to be loaded with the larger logs to be taken away in, as is traditional we ended up moving them and then carrying them back to where they started. BW Graham managed to make a lot of friends by providing ice creams from the van parked in the car park and it would have been impolite not to stop work and have them. As we got to the end of the afternoon we loaded up the fire until it reached inferno level as the local volunteers could stay and watch it and started to pack up.

Back at Rupert and Alison’s we packed our stuff and even had another hot shower, two showers on a dig is shocking enough but you expect at least one to be icy cold. We said our goodbyes and thank you’s and set off back down the windy lanes toward London.

So glorious weather, 5 star accommodation and pub food, definitely a great weekend for all involved. Many thanks to Rupert and Alison for letting us invade, to the locals for their work, and to Tenco for the continuous supply of fallen trees

Richard Cool