Morning brought complaints from the volunteers as the doors were thrown open and daylight penetrated the depths of the hall, hitting site we found that the work was to be continuing with the brick laying started by the canal camp a few weeks previously. Distribution of the work force left Sally and Dave Miller down Ed’s hole rebuilding the retaining wall, Matt working on the bridge parapet, Tom, Andi and Dave Charlton rebuilding the nearside gate recess and Rick and Bob rebuilding a paddle culvert each. With all the brick laying going on there was still work for loads of other people and Nat and Andy took the kit formed formwork for the paddle culverts in hand, unfortunately the kit had been made the wrong shape and they spent the rest of the weekend reshaping it. Brick cleaning and mortar making kept everyone else busy for the first day, the huge pile of dirty bricks left over from the demo work of the camp were taken care of in short order.

Back on the bridge work two major problems were coming to light, a major crack in the arch next to Ed’s hole meant that a section of arch had to be demolished, about ten minutes work for yours truly with a wrecking bar and a Dave. On the parapet it was found that all four walls had been built originally to different curves and so some modification to the brickwork with a breaker and an angle grinder was needed. A couple more jobs developed during the afternoon, the chamber was pumped down far enough for a patch of broken brickwork to be pressure washed ready for rebuilding and formwork was put up on the end of Acro’s for the arch patching.

Back at the hut, as it was a good evening and the scouts had a barbecue we decided that it was high time for the London WRG summer barbecue, unfortunately so much food was prepared that the fruit-salad-with-eyeballs had to be saved for site the next day. Later on in the evening Martin had to be recovered from Bury St. Edmonds after his Morris failed on the last stretch back from a ResCom meeting on the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal.

Sunday morning and amidst complaints of “National jet lag” we made it to site again for yet more brick laying and by the end of the day the bridge parapets had come up a lot and a major patch job in the chamber had been broken out, pressure washed and partially rebuilt by Dave. Heading back into London we had to jump-start Martin’s Morris a further couple of times before getting back to Waterloo.

An absolutely superb dig with a lot of volunteers back from the camp and a great deal of work completed on the lock. Thanks to Matt for organising most of the dig, Sally and Dale for being cake fairies and all the people who helped do catering while the rest of us were on site.

Ed Walker

Andi and Dave Charlton working on the gate recess