Kennet & Avon Canal:
20-21 January 2001
Photos by Carl Whitehead
| Originally this dig was meant to be continuing
the back pump support works on the Basingstoke Canal as part of our
Dig Deep commitments, it was found that as the contractors were
running behind their would be no work for us. An E-mail from the
British Waterways volunteer co-ordinator for the K&A and some
swift discussion, it was decided that we would work on the Bradford
section of the K&A, removing some stone from the bed of the
canal to allow a piling operation to start on the Monday. |
 |
We arrived in Devizes at 11.05pm
on the Friday after having collected a camp kit trailer from deep cut on
the Basingstoke and Rick from a station nearby. A new use was found for
the mobile phone collection, phoning the people already in the pub to get
a round in before closing time! We were staying in the Devizes Canal
Centre, the only problem with it was that it was a half hour from site.
On reaching site the next morning
we found that some of the local Millennium Volunteers would be giving us a
hand and so we started work at removing the stones from the canal bed and
onto the bank, as the canal bed was frozen solid, this was harder than it
seemed as all the stones had frozen to it! A bit of work with a wrecking
bar soon loosened them up though. A small hydraulic dumper was used to
move the recovered stone to the storage area where it was to be used to
repair a wall around the local tithe barn. A hard mornings work saw most
of the canal cleared of stones and work was started by Lesley and Dorian
to patch the retaining wall that had become undercut by water. Lunch was
in the canal centre, heated with electricity…luxury! The afternoon saw
more dumper loading and a start was made on recovering more stone from a
heap of clay.
Back
at the accommodation after one of Martin’s excellent spag bol’s we
headed down the local hostelry for a few jugs of pigswill before an
impromptu slide show at the accommodation.
The next day prove to be warmer
but as the rain had thawed the canal out it was much squidgier underfoot.
Martin and Marcus headed off to a WRG board meeting leaving the rest of us
to complete the work. The last of the stone was removed from the canal
bank and the clay heap team held a small rebellion. Not wanting to work on
the clay heap all afternoon we cut back a number of trees that had fallen
into the canal before heading down the pub to wait for Martin’s return.
A very good dig, despite the less than technical nature of the work but it was nice to work on a canal where all the local people seemed to be interested in the work. We certainly seemed to impress Carl, the local BW representative with the speed that we cleared the stone out of the canal and it looks like we may be able to do more work down there at some point as a lot of lock quadrants need replacement.
Last update: 25 January 2001.