Friday

My first time running a weekend dig started off with not having to get in a minibus, for me that’s a shock. Instead I got a lift with Sal we eventually (evil tube trains) we set off for the Foxham Reading Rooms. The journey took a little longer than expected as Sal had never been there before and I had only seen the route from the back of a van.

Eventually we met up with everyone else (except Martin, who had a worse journey than us) in the Foxham Inn where we stayed for a bit before heading back to the hall for toast and unpacking. I have to mention David living up to his “sleepy” nickname by getting a drink of water, sitting on his bed and falling asleep fully dressed within minutes of us getting back. He also got up at some ungodly hour of the morning looking for the toilet, headed in the opposite direction that he should and walked straight into the trolley full of folded tables.

Saturday

Sal did the honours cooking breakfast, we made the lunch and headed on to site where the Burco had just boiled so we sat down again for tea and job lists.

First up was the top of the nearly finished Lock 3, while Luke and another local worked to fit the last of the coping stones we dumpered and barrowed backfill in behind the existing stones and then compacted it with trampling, stamping, and, in Sal’s case, line-dancing. While this was happening at ground level we sent Liz and Paul into the bottom of the lock to start chipping out some damaged bricks which would be replaced later.

After lunch sand bags were in ingenious ways with the aid of a dumper, backfilling started on the, now complete, towpath side and people started neatly stacking the bricks that had made up lock 4. I swapped with Liz and went into the depths of the lock to discover that chipping out bricks is not as easy as it looks, especially when you think you are trying to remove a half brick and discover it is a whole brick end on.

Back at the hall Nigel and Chris joined us, fresh from looking at Universities, and Rowena with the shopping for her to cook tea. A traditional London wrg meal of Spaghetti Bolognaise and Garlic Bread followed with fruit and squirty cream (more on that later) for pudding. We also presented Ed with a Bob the Builder cake for his upcoming birthday.

Back to the Foxham Inn where even a small dig of 11 people can take over the whole place. The usual highbrow topics of Politics, the Arts and the Socio-Economic structure of the country were discussed (they could have, I can’t remember) and then back to the hall for toast and rewriting “Everybody’s free to wear Sunscreen” with a wrgie slant (See Navvies for more)

Sunday

Liz cooked us breakfast and then it was back to site for more of the same. Nigel and Liz went into the lock to replace the broken bricks with Chis making mortar while Allan, David and Ed took the two Dumpers and an Excavator to collect dredgings and fill a ditch. Sal put her painting skills to use on the W&B scaffolding which left me and Rowena to move the bricks, at this point I made a command decision that Sal might need some help so we went to do that instead along with Ed’s portable radio (Land Rover Discovery).

Lunch included Ed’s birthday cake and also the leftovers from last night pudding, a bowl of fruit and most of a can of squirty cream, the challenge being “how much can you put on a bit of fruit and still eat it?” It also made it’s way onto chocolate cake and the almond cakes, we stopped short of putting it on the celery.

After lunch Nigel went off to discover the “interesting” controls of the excavator, Martin went down the lock to finish off the brickwork and Ed joined us on the painting and brought his eclectic selection of music with him.

With the scaffolding and brickwork finished we stopped about 4:30, packed up and went back to the hall. Kit was packed, the hall was swept and Liz managed to find a few more bits of fruit to cover with the last of the squirty cream.

Thanks, as always to Luke and Rachael for organising the jobs on site, to Liz and Sal for cooking breakfast, and to Ro for cook tea.

Richard Worthington