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Our third attempt of the year at a dig on the Wey & Arun finally came off… sort of! Martin started the weekend in style, with a record late departure from Waterloo – even phoning to say he was going to be late. A “quick” trip down to Aileen’s in Kent, meant Rick had plenty of time to buy burgers while waiting to be collected at Guildford. Arrival at the Foresters was at a nerve-wracking 10.59, only just behind Dave “Breakdown” Miller. After a very poncy breakfast, including congealed fried blood, cooked by the W&A campreunionites whom we were sharing accommodation with, we set off for the first trip round the countryside to Tickeners. Having picked up the land rover and trailer, we set off in heavy rain for Rowner lock. The farmer decided the field was too soggy to allow us to drive to site, so martin got to display his reversing for the first of several occasions during the weekend. Our hopes for 11 o’clock on site became noon, but walking across fields we managed to gain a volunteer, Bob, who had spent the morning trying to find us! With the rain continuing, we were unable to do the pointing, painting of the bollards or racking of the submerged stop-planks. Instead, we had a game of kerplonk on a huge scale, demolishing the sides of the old shed while leaving the roof to provide shelter. After lunch we went to collect a work flat from Drungewick with the land rover, as it was going to be the only way of removing materials from that site. We launched the boat at Newbridge and then set off for Rowner, clearing all the fallen trees on the way, using some interesting underwater sawing techniques. Very soggy and smelling of duckweed, we retired to the Foresters. Sunday actually turned out to be dry and sunny, so we did a spot of boating, it being Bring-a-Boat weekend albeit on a different canal. We finally removed the roof from the shed and burnt it. More scrub and scrap clearance filled the day, with Martin boating everything off to Tickners. Leaving site was inevitably complicated, first boating everything back to Newbridge, then recovering the boat and dropping it off at Drungewick, dropping the land rover off at Tickners, dropping the keys to the hall off at an unknown house in Kirdford, collecting the trainers Martin had dropped off by mistake at Tickners, dropping Rick off at Guildford and dropping everyone else off at Waterloo very late. All in all, a bit off a drop off! Not really! Very productive, considering the weather and that it was the Wey & Arun! |