The second London WRG visit to the Lichfield Canal this year saw the first ever joint dig with a newly reconstituted North-East WRG. With a long list of tasks and a large number of willing volunteers it promised to be an excellent dig.

Saturday morning. The advance guard reach site to find that the local groups JCB had developed a leak in its hydraulics and could not be moved. While this was being repaired the first job was to finish off the shuttering for the back filling of the swing bridge. At some point while this work was being done the brick delivery truck got bogged down on the access road and all the bricks had to be off loaded before the concrete delivery arrived! At around this point the brick laying team started on the bridge hole wing walls and the concrete lorry arrived, found it could not get on site so concrete had to be picked up in the dumpers and then shoveled round the shuttering on the bridge. An hour and a half later ~4 cubic metres of concrete had been poured, vibrated down and emergency repairs had been made to the offside shuttering as it was bulging out due to the weight of concrete. After the rushing around was over and everyone had had a brew a group was started on exposing the culvert fitted by last years canal camp so that it could be piled round and not through. Another team built the scaffolding tower to be used for piling and John Park was setting new records for speed brick laying.

Saturday afternoon. The piling team started off slowly with the (relatively) easy job off leveling off some previously placed piles, so while Angus struggled with the beast of Lichfield (its that JCB again) the rest of my motley team got to play with a compressor and a piling hammer. While a lot of noise was being made half way down the cut yet more brick laying was being done, trees were being felled and the exposure of the culvert had shown that it leaks. As the sun set the piling team forgoes the bus home and carries on working, the job being removing some short piles so that long piles could replace them. After much discussing of various methods of removing the piles the job was finally done just as the light finally went completely.

Saturday evening. Returned to hall to find the children's disco still in full swing and dinner would be delayed. Found that even ear defenders cannot prevent you hearing the Barbie Song but in the end it all finished. Dinner was up to its usual standards and the weary navvies adjourned to the pub for a couple of pints of mild.

Sunday morning. Arrived on site to find a large crane had appeared to help mount the superstructure of the swing bridge, this task took most of the rest of the day and the bridge was later tested with the weight of about twenty navvies later on. The brick laying team started off again, the name tags were attached to piles, ground anchors were fitted and the piling team had the enjoyable task of refitting the piles removed the day before. This developed into a quite hairy task, as getting the last pile to slot into the two next to it required the use of the piling hammer at above head height and involved Matt and I standing on top of the piles already placed to pound this one in. Well in the end the task was completed and we had managed to straighten out the run of piles, not bad for a team with practically no piling experience!

Sunday afternoon. The work carried on, the piling team moved to the bridge and fitted a few more piles before calling it a day, the crane finished its work, mince pies were delivered and the JCB sprung a leak again.

Special thanks to Matt and Helen (Bushbaby) for organising a brilliant weekend, despite some minor set backs I believe that everyone had an enjoyable dig.