On the weekend of 21-22 September, as something approaching half a million rural folks descended on London for the Countryside Rally, London WRG did the opposite and headed from darkest Waterloo to deepest Sussex. Not - as was suggested in the van on the way down - so that we could redress the balance by holding a 'Town Rally', and wave placards demanding that the country-dwellers don't forget about us townies, and don't try to outlaw our traditional urban pursuits such as drug-dealing and mugging old ladies... No, it was to spend a weekend working on the Wey & Arun Canal.

In several ways it differed from past W&A work-parties: for example we weren't staying in our regular accommodation at Kirdford, but in what turned out to be a rather nice hall in Ifold - once we'd managed to find the key at the Oak Tree Stores (that's just the name of the shop, by the way... they don't actually sell oak trees), which the Canal Trust had told us was in Plaistow (not the one in East London, but the next village to Ifold) - but which turned out to actually be in Ifold... nice try, guys! It was also remarkable for the fact that two volunteers were late on site due to their cars breaking down... and neither of them was me! Fortunately both Nat and Allan managed to get their vehicles fixed and join us for part of the weekend.

But in one way it was like almost every other Wey & Arun work-party...
To get to the Wey & Arun work site you have to drive along a lane from the main road to a farm, then through the farmyard and across a field full of cows to a muddy dirt track, then along a muddy dirt-track down a steep hill to where it crosses the remains of the canal not far from the river, then you turn and go along the towpath for some way.

That's not any particular Wey & Arun work-site, mind you. That's a description of pretty much every work site on the W&A that we’ve ever worked on, and this one was no different. OK we were working on a different site (called 'Bonfire Hanger') that we'd never worked on before: different lane; different farm; different field; different cows (*), different muddy dirt-track; different steep hill... same canal. You can't start work on the W&A without first lugging all your tools in a wheelbarrow across a field full of cows, down a muddy dirt-track...

Well actually you can. Because that was another way that this dig differed from the Wey & Arun norm (No, that's not the name of one of the locals, like Cotswold Neil or Droitwich Bill... I mean 'what's normal on the W&A'.) Anyway, just for once the work-site was not subject to the 'Sussex Monsoon' that afflicts the canal to a remarkable extent, considering that the canal was always short of water when it was open. Just for once, we didn't have to don our waders to get to site. We didn't get the WACT Land Rover bogged down and incur the wrath of the farmer while trying to get through the field of cows. We didn't have to cancel the dig at 24 hours notice thanks to the site being waterlogged. We didn't (unlike last time) have to borrow a work-boat to get materials to and from site.

That's right - for almost the first time in 20 years of London WRG visits to the Wey & Arun, the work-site and access to it was BONE DRY! This meant that (a) we could drive ourselves and all our tools all the way to site in the minibus, saving a good half-hour each day and (b) one of the main jobs for the weekend was shifting building materials from the farm down to the site in the dumper, on the grounds that it was unlikely that we'd ever get such good conditions again.

The other major job represented another major difference between this work party and previous ones - whereas normally we spend our time clearing the canal and removing blockages, this time we spent most of it building a rather solid H-shaped brick structure right in the middle, as the centre of a dam to block the canal. If you think that seems a slightly odd approach to waterway restoration, you're probably right. But as local Graham explained to us - and we spent all weekend explaining to passers-by - the plan is that this length of canal needs to be re-watered as soon as possible. Initially this is so that it can act as a reservoir to supply the restored 'Loxwood Link' length further south, where the trip-boat 'Zachariah Keppel' already operates, and where the newly-built bridge and aqueduct at Loxwood are extending navigation southwards; full restoration of the Bonfire Hanger length for navigation will follow at a later date. There are several locks at Bonfire Hanger - all of which appear to have been completely demolished and the building materials taken away - and rather than go to the effort and expense of rebuilding the locks now, when this section of canal isn't likely to see boats for maybe 10 years or so, temporary brick and clay dams are being built as a way of impounding the water in the meantime. Maybe in 10 years time, the south end of the canal will be complete, and we'll be back at Bonfire Hanger to find out how good our dams are when we knock them down and rebuild the locks.

Anyway we set to work on the second of three of these dams that are currently under construction, continuing with the part-built brickwork, clearing some of the surrounding area with the brushcutter and digging out trenches either side of the dam for sandbag-based clay banks to be built.

We were rather surprised to be joined by two visitors from California - and rather more surprised to find that they know all about us: they even knew that my car had broken down on our last dig! The wonders of the World Wide Web - they'd been reading all about us online on the WRG web site from the USA! And it turned out that they rebuild old British cars in the USA for enthusiasts, and were over here to source some spares. (strangely they didn't seem interested in buying-up the remains of Nat's, Allan's or my vehicle...) Anyway they joined Graham on another job - constructing a wooden footbridge to replace a footpath across the canal bed. And yes, we know it's only a foot above water level and you won't fit a boat under it.... see the above explanation of why we're building dams across the canal etc etc.

By the time we knocked off on Saturday evening the trenches were dug, brickwork had had several courses added to it, all of our volunteers had actually found their way to the work-site (thank you Paula for the novel idea of indicating directions from the farm down to site by sticking rubber work-gloves on the appropriate arm of each of the 'public footpath' signposts!) and we headed back to Ifold for a meal of Spag Bol followed by a large trifle made with just some of the surplus tinned fruit from the last dig.

Then it was off to the pub. Unfortunately there isn't one in Ifold, so we walked along a public footpath that led to the towpath of the canal, and then along the towpath to the canalside Onslow Arms at Loxwood. Remarkably (and unlike the last time we tried it) we didn't get lost on the way to the pub, nor - even more remarkably - on the way back.

On Sunday we carried on with the bricklaying and with dumpering cement and ballast from the farm, and having completed the trenches, we filled and laid a couple of hundred concrete-filled sandbags. We worked on till a little later than usual to complete the brickwork, which meant that by the time we got back to the accommodation with little more than 15 minutes to clear it up, pack everything and get the key back to Oak Tree Stores before it shut. Somehow we managed this, although we didn't so much pack the catering kit as shovel it into the van...

Anyway thank you to everyone who turned out - I'm assured by WACT that next time we're there the canal will have water in it (thanks to the dams we've built) and so will the towpath, the field, the muddy dirt-track etc etc. (thanks to the inevitable return of the usual W&A weather conditions!)

(*) Well I assume that they were different cows, but I've no way of knowing... in fact I've just had a spooky thought that they might be the same cows every time, and as we drove past they were thinking "Different farm; different field; different muddy dirt-track; different Transit full of navvies... or is it the same one?!?"