After a leaving from Waterloo late we finally arrived at the closest pub to the village hall only 3 minutes before closing time, a swift round of drinks and it was time to head to the hall for the usual toast orgy. The next day dawned and we reached site BEFORE 9am!! Martin then proceeded to leave us in the van to slope off towards the H&G for a restoration committee meeting, the unfortunate souls left on site had the priority job of putting the finishing touches on the shuttering erected by BITM and the local's over the previous week. The concrete lorry arrived promptly at 10am and we found that idea of pouring the concrete straight from the lorry into the shuttering was going to be unworkable, as the lorry could not get on site! Swift improvisation with some plywood, a large number of barrows, a small dumper and the 3C meant that we spent the next 1.5h shoveling and barrowing 10 tonne of concrete into the shuttering. After a successful strike was led by Marcus lunch was decided to be a good idea, just in time Maureen appeared with the cake!

The afternoons work consisted of demolishing one of the lock wing walls that acted as a base to the bridge to allow rebuilding. Finding that mortar seemed to be an invention not used on this canal the wall came down in double quick time, even quicker with a slight tap of the bucket on the 3C. The weather having held dry for most of the day decided to rain on us just as we left site, back at the hall dinner was started and a small number of us sloped off to the pub to make up for the previous night. Martin reappeared from Over just in time to put the finishing touches on an excellent chicken stew.

Next day on site was more of the same, shuttering was removed from one side of the lock and re-erected on the other side by a team led by Dan, Martin and Lesley did syncopated brick removal and patching on the lock wall, Radio 5 Live turned up and interviewed us, and a large amount of earth and bricks were bucket chained from the wing wall.

Overall a very good dig, it is god to see that a site we have worked on before is coming along so well.