With the London WRG van being off on camps duty and a last minute change in site this was always going to be an “interesting” dig to organise. So Friday evening saw me loading up the Disco with a selection of tools and then stopping off at Tesco in Didcot to buy the food with Liz who had (foolishly?) volunteered to act as dinner cook for the weekend. Half an hour’s driving later saw us in South Marston where a short search ensued for the village hall – it was not in the place I’d been led to believe! The hall seemed quite nice with only two drawbacks – the car parking was 5 minutes walk away and there was no fridge! Good thing I packed the cooler bag then. Leaving the Disco outside as signpost seemed to work quite well as Richard Thomas and Sleepy David soon arrived and an expedition was mounted to the local pub. Got to love these new licensing hours – meant that when Tim, Helen, Nigel, Chris (the younger) and Lesley arrived they could still have a beer. Nigel probably had the worst journey in as he ended up collecting catering kit from somewhere near Dartford!

Saturday morning arrived far too quickly (that’ll be the downside of the new licensing hours!) and I was doing the leadership thing of cooking breakfast and delivering tea/coffee in bed. The Stepping Stone bridge site being a mile down an unmade track most people ended up walking down the canal from a nearby car park while Liz and I took the track in the Disco with the tools. Meeting up with Chris Forward (the local) on site we had the job for the weekend explained – basically tweak the bridge arch so that instead of being 17 foot wide it was 19 foot wide! Cue London WRGies wielding sledgehammers, picks, chisels, bars and an excavator. A short time later and two rather large piles of rubble were all that remained of the nearside arch and Nigel was wielding the excavator pulling back the clay infill (overheard to mutter “come back Blue, all is forgiven!”) Work proceeded in shifts as people stopped for squash breaks but soon we reached the stage of digging the footing for the arch former and new brick arch. Chris Wicks and Alice passed through to collect the London WRG Stihl saw for their camp – probably better to say they walked through as MKP had threatened a violent death if they took the brand new van down the track!

After lunch a small, select group (well Tim, Helen, Liz and Chris anyway!) headed off to the Pocket Park site to assemble and erect a kissing gate, apparently they had immense trouble with erecting it straight as it kept going on the piss.

After lunch Bob, Jon G and Richard Thomas carried on with excavating the footing – this now being in two inches of water meant that each swing of the pick sprayed Jon with mud. At about 5pm we left site, leaving behind two very large piles of rubble and a large pile of spoil – the starting point of a tasteful and sensitive restoration of an 18th century bridge, i.e. we’re going to completely demo it in the end!

Back at the accom Liz was cooking lasagne and the last of the wayward volunteers turned up – Suzie, who managed to completely miss the accom despite finding the Disco parked outside it, James cried off at the last minute – something about being stuck in the West country with no trains back to civilisation. Al fresco style garlic bread was made; we managed to remove most of the grass out of it before cooking! Martin appeared just after dinner – the Morris having suspected head issues, a half hours work by torchlight in the school car park showed it was actually valves – apparently Martin always carries a spare.

Sunday – Tim and Helen cooked breakfast and we headed back to site – Tim to carry on with his kissing gate and put a couple of fence posts in while the rest of us finished the hole for the arch footing. About an hour later and Chris the local pronounced the job done – so tea was had, tools were cleaned and we headed back to the accom for lunch where Martin had finally finished grinding his valve. With nothing else to do people headed home, a group of us stopping off at the Abingdon Junction site to have a wander and take some “before” photos.

Many thanks to Chris Forward for having us on short notice – despite the dig being quite short the demo work was certainly fun! Nothing like trashing some quality heritage in a good cause!

Ed Walker.