6-8 June 2003

A report by Nat Belderson
Photos by Andrew Roberts, Alan Lines and Ed Walker

We were supposed to be working on the Grand Western Canal this weekend, but last minute site difficulties meant that unfortunately this camp had to be cancelled. Luckily Adrian managed to find us a new site on the Hereford and Gloucester Canal. The trip down on Friday was interesting. Two minibuses meant that one could go ahead to the accommodation while the other (GCW) went to pick up Martin from Reading.

The journey in GCW was without audio entertainment, as we didn’t have the code in order to be able to work the radio. This was because Sal had run the battery down earlier (probably by doing something silly and girlie like plugging her hairdryer into the cigarette lighter and then using it for 3 hours).

We ran a bit late due to circling inner Reading for an hour looking for Martin, so we had to phone our drink orders ahead to the advance party who had travelled in NJF. We arrived just as last orders were being served, and Bungle managed to make us look dodgy by wandering round with GCW’s radio under his arm.

On Saturday we arrived on the site of the future Newent Wharf. Suspicions were aroused when we arrived at the site. It was located in “Old Station Road”, the wharf remains consisted of two partially buried parallel walls looking rather like station platforms, the canal itself ran on an embankment, yet didn’t seem to have any banks to keep the water in and the canal bed was made of compacted stone rather like …railway ballast. It was time to face the truth. We were on a railway camp.

Having renamed ourselves the London Railway Recovery Group, we set about our tasks. One team focussed on scrub-bashing, chopping down many trees and removing undergrowth. This was mainly in the station area, but also extended along the line of the railway/canal, and ivy was also removed to uncover some impressive red sandstone bridge abutments that had previously carried the railway across a nearby road.

Richard spent the day in Blue excavating buried sections of platform. All sorts of debris was uncovered including several bits of car, the porcelain base of a toilet, and eventually …a station platform.

A third task was putting in RSJs as heavy-duty fenceposts around the boundary of the site. Fly-tipping had been a problem prior to the recent acquisition of the site by the H&G Canal Trust (hence why Richard was having to excavate the platform), so the insertion of the fenceposts was a priority. The RSJs were cut and manhandled into holes dug through the tarmac using a JCB pneumatic drill-type thingy. The holes needed to be about 2’ deep as the posts were so large. Once positioned within each hole, the posts were levelled up and concreted in. Getting water for the concrete was fun as the river was down a very steep bank and there was no bottom in the bucket.

Some of us stayed in lateish on the site in order to get as many posts concreted in as possible. We were only on site for 11 hours that day though.

Martin did a brilliant BBQ in the evening and we ended up in the pub again. I don’t seem to remember it being raided, but I’m sure there were policemen wandering around in flak-jackets at one point. Maybe they had heard about suspicious characters having been in there the night before!

On Sunday, we put in more fenceposts. This time, rather than RSJ’s, they were concrete. They were about 8’ tall with angled anti-scale arms on top facing inwards Possibly this is in order to prevent wrgies from escaping? These posts will use chainlink, rather than panel fencing. The need for big blokes to lift the fenceposts into the holes meant that Tim actually had to do some work for a change.

The panels we had did not quite fit between the RSJ posts we had put in the day before, and various lengths of wire and suchlike were needed to put the panels in place.

Martin used Blue to remove tree stumps and level part of the site where the fencing would allow widened road access. This was necessary in order to provide adequate passing for lorries in the road next to the site.

Although the site was an old railway line, the actual aim is to build the new canal on top of the disused railway (which was partially aligned along the original canal formation). The old station platforms will eventually be extended in height to form a wharf either side of the canal, and the two fine old red sandstone bridge abutments will eventually carry the canal across the nearby road.

As this was my first experience of leading a camp, I must say that I had fun poncing around in a hi-vis jacket looking important, but it did seem a bit like herding cats at times! New(ish) people Jean and Andy seemed to enjoy themselves, which was good, but hopefully everybody enjoyed the weekend. Thanks must go to Adrian for managing to find this site at short notice, and to Martin (and others) for provision of breakfast and BBQ.

The end.

Nat xxxx