It was a Friday night, and all was well. I was about half way to Kirdford village hall, in West Sussex, which was to be our home for the weekend. When my mind wondered back to a comment that I think Moose made earlier in the year (at the London wrg AGM) “Jolly Good, your leading the WOE and AGGRO, FOOL!!!!” (Apologies Moose if it wasn’t you, but it was the sort of comment you would make). Arriving in Kirdford I began to wonder if he was right. Whilst trying to find the house that the lady with the keys lives in, I discovered that there are two number 24`s (yes that’s right, two number 24`s). No one told me that the road splits into two, with no name change. After what felt like 15mins, but probably only 5, I find the keys. Oh well, what was I to expect, we were on the Woe and Aggro - I mean Wey & Arun after all.

Back at the hall, I set up my bed for the night, got all the tables and chairs out for the morning, before sitting back with my new copy of Canal Boat to await the arrival of the others.

Marcus arrived first, so we went for a site visit before it got dark. At which point Marcus started to wish he had gone some were else for the weekend! Arriving back at the hall, we find the rest of the team ensconced in the Lwrg natural habitat, the local pub. Just before last orders Moose & Maria arrived with the comment, “Nigel you forgot to post the directions to the accommodation on the email list. It was a good job we knew roughly where we were heading for, before we got lost!” OOPS.

As usual we were the last to leave, so back at the hall we started on the beer / wine / coffee supplies before turning in at some time between midnight and 2am.

Saturday arrived and after a lovely breakfast, cooked by Jenny, I split everyone into 3 teams before starting my day as Leader / Minibus driver / General dogs body / can you just nip up to “Tickners” and get ??? / Pick up people for lunch / drop people back after lunch / Just nip up to “Tickners” again / “you lazy g-t, when are you going to do some work” / Etc, Etc.

Anyway after a hectic day trying to make sure everyone got to where they needed to be and had the tools to do the job with, we all arrived back at the hall for a delicious supper cooked by the ever smiling Jenny, before retiring to the pub as usual.

Sunday arrives and proceeds much the same as the day before, except I get the same
“You’ve given me a S..T job, I’ll have my revenge” comment from Moose every time we speak / meet instead of every other time the day before. Good job I am NOT going to the National this year.

Enough from me for the moment, the following are the separate version of events from the different work sites that I only visited for short periods of time during the weekend, when I wasn’t trying to add as many miles to poor old NJF as I possibly could.

Haybarn Bridge Demolition: by Ed Walker.

I am not sure what came over me to volunteer to head down to site with Marcus early on Saturday morning, I’m blaming the ropey pint of Tanglefoot I had in the Forrester’s Arms on Friday night! So with a minor hangover I climbed into “beastie” with most of London WRG’s demo equipment, half-an-hours driving later (this is the Wey & Arun, you have to drive halfway around the county first, its traditional!) we made it to the farm and got our first proper look at the bridge. This was one of the major tasks for the weekend and the four of us (Gilly and Andy “I park excavators on their side” Richardson joined us later) were to trash the structure down to bed level to allow its replacement with a swing bridge. To assist with this task we had the London WRG Stihl saw, a five tonne excavator with pecker and Marcus’s hard won knowledge from destroying the sewage works at Over. (Apparently built like the proverbial.)

Marcus took first stint with the excavator and once we figured out how jerry built (literally and figuratively in this case, built by German POW’s!) the bridge was, the parapets came down quickly. In between watching Marcus and redirecting errant walkers I trained Andy and Gilly in using the Stihl saw, mostly used over the weekend for slicing through bits of rebar. Marcus finished the parapets and started on the deck, Andy, Gilly and I made some measurements to allow the swing bridge to be fitted at the right height and built a couple of steps on the footpath diversion. Lunch arrived; the bridge was down to three RSJ’s across the cut and all seemed to be going well. After a delicious lunch supplied by Jenny Wilson we went back to it – well in truth Marcus and the excavator went back to it and the rest of us had a doze in the sun. By the end of the day Marcus had managed to get the concrete away from the RSJ’s at one side of the canal, due to the layout of the site the other side would have to be broken out from the bottom of the canal.

The next day I again got woken up by Marcus at obscene o’clock – don’t remember volunteering for that this time! Back on site and it was my turn to do my worst with the excavator, first task drive it between the RSJ’s exposed yesterday to get the far bank within pecker range, a bit of work and a few slashes with the Stihl saw freed the beam and Marcus performed some nice manoeuvres with the excavator and beastie to drag the beam up to the farm. Back in the cab again and with a bit more space to work the second beam seemed to be coming out with minimal effort, unfortunately while tracking the excavator out of the bed to finish the removal process I managed to snag one of the hydraulic hoses feeding the pecker and snap it off. Cue large spray of hydraulic oil and one disabled excavator, luckily I managed to track it out of the cut before it drained completely. This seemed a convenient point to have lunch.

After lunch and seeing that the other jobs around the canal were finished either due to more knackered kit or operator exhaustion everyone set about making the bridge safe, this mainly involved barring out the beam I had mostly freed and cutting back all the exposed reinforcing bars. With the site made safe we headed back to the accom. and home.

Thanks to Nigel for running a good weekend in less than ideal conditions and to Jenny Wilson for feeding us all that fine food!

Tales from the middle site: by Sally Nutt.

For Martin, Sleepy Dave, Phil and myself our destination for Saturday was the middle site, or Lordings Lock or the site without a bridge of any description new or ex!

The original plan was to continue with the local’s work of bricklaying on the lock. However due to the necessary local not being available we were set to task removing a HUGE tree stump from the middle of the towpath. The morning was spent digging, mattocking, sawing and axing to uncover all the roots and cut them loose from the main trunk. Work was progressing well by lunchtime and we were grateful for the shade our site had, as nature hadn’t been so kind on the other teams.

Post lunch to save Nigel having to drive us back to site we decided it would be just as quick to walk. So a leisurely walk down the towpath, with historical notes by Martin and Dave took us back to site and the stump, which was still looking firmly attached. The afternoon continued much as the morning with the site becoming more and more littered with wood chips from the axes. We also had the opportunity during the day to look at the water wheel. It pulls water from the river below up into the aqueduct, which is next to the lock. At the end of the day we wandered to the swing bridge-cleaning site to be picked up.

Sunday, back on site minus Martin but plus Nigel and two Tirfors we were hoping that some gentle persuasion or brute force and ignorance may get the tree stump out. However we had the brute force but the Tirfors didn’t quite manage it, being a little too small for the size of tree. Nigel and I left Phil and Dave to cut through the extra roots, which had been found and returned the Tirfors and tools. Post lunch a van tidy and helping tidy the other sites took us to the end of the day.

Hopefully the locals will be able to get a larger Tirfor soon and finally extract the tree stump. Alternatively we were debating if we could carve it into a bollard for the lock and just leave it!!!

Needle gunning job on the Swing bridge: by Richard Thomas.

Note to reader, the events described in this part of the dig report may differ from the memories of others present, this can be ascribed to either, reporters license, sunstroke, my failing memory four weeks after the event or having snorted too much of the finest Leeds & Liverpool powdered rust at the time.

Those of us who had drawn the short straw and been assign to the de rusting team were delivered to site by Nigel to find a rather larger structure than I had anticipated. The engineer having given it the thumbs up (apparently those cross members with the lace doily appearance aren't "pertinent to the structural integrity" - no honest it does look in good nick) it was our job to remove as much of the rust flakes with hammers and nail guns prior to a contractor grit blasting and undercoating it.

While the compressor and nail guns were delivered we perused the array of protective gear, earplugs & muffs, goggles, facemasks and disposable overalls. Apparently most of the more accessible parts had already been tackled and it was our fate to attack the backbreaking underside. Some eschewed the stylish romper suits and sort the shade under the bridge, quickly applying a rust coloured coat of sun block and distributing ourselves along the bridge where Peter (shortly to be dubbed Peter Panda) began to tackle the pivot point. There we remained for most of the morning, only emerging for essential tea breaks and to see who was trip trapping across the bridge, in this case the trolls found no Billy goats gruff just a Moose in hobnail boots finding a novel way of chipping off rust (well he did volunteer me to write this). During one of the vital tea breaks we discovered the earmuffs Peter had been wearing had left him clean white circular patches around his ears like a Panda, while the misapplication of a wet wipe apparently resulted in a brief guest appearance by Groucho Marx.

Lunch was heralded by a phone call from Sal to remind Nigel to bring the "mugs" for lunch, so we all climbed aboard the mini bus to one of the other sites. The afternoon followed a similar pattern with more essential tea breaks then back to the hall where those of us who wore shorts rather than romper suits pondered the wisdom when faced with one small washbasin.

On Sunday it was yet more of the same but with John being substituted by the destructive power of Bob and his biscuits. Gradually we moved on to the even more inaccessible parts and Lesley discovered that by turning her head sideways she could get the peak of her helmet and the rest of her head up between the struts _ effectively into a large resonating metal box being hammered and nail gunned by all. By lunchtime while Richard Cool was still living up to his name lying back cross-legged wheeling a nail gun in an outstretched arm, but the rest of us were drooping as we found the other bridge team were when we arrived. All in all a hot, noisy and dirty job but good fun and if we go back to paint the bridge bags I not crawling around underneath it again.

Back to me again.

All that remains is for me to thank everyone for turning up and making the weekend an enjoyable and fun experience for me, considering it was the first weekend that I have organized.

Special thanks to Jenny Wilson for the lovely food.
Moose for lots of encouragement and good reason not to attend the National.
Marcus for breaking the bridge, and Ed for breaking the excavator.
Sally and Maria for cleaning out NJF.

Also thanks to Ed, Sally, & Richard for their parts of this dig report.

Hope to see you all soon on the Woe & Aggro, Oops, Sorry I mean Wey & Arun.

Cheers,

Nigel Lee