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VVVVVolunteerolunteerolunteerolunteerolunteers rs rs rs rs restoring westoring westoring westoring westoring waaaaaterwterwterwterwterwaaaaayyyyysssssNo 206 August - SeNo 206 August - SeNo 206 August - SeNo 206 August - SeNo 206 August - September 2004ptember 2004ptember 2004ptember 2004ptember 2004

Stop Press: £11m Lottery Jackpot forCotswold Canals

Contributions......are always welcome, whether hand-written,typed, on 3½" floppy disk, CD-ROM or by e-mail. Photos also welcome: slides or colour orb/w prints. Please state whether you want yourprints back; I assume that you want slidesreturned. Digital / computer scanned photosalso welcome, either on floppy / CD-ROM or ase-mail attachments, preferably JPG format.Send them to the editor Martin Ludgate, 35,Silvester Road, London SE22 9PB, or e-mailto [email protected]. Press date forNo 207: September 1st.

SubscriptionsA year's subscription (6 issues) is available for aminimum of £1.50 (please add a donation if pos-sible) to Sue Watts, 15 Eleanor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 9FZ . Cheques to"Waterway Recovery Group" please.Visit our web site www.wrg.org.uk for all the latest news of WRG's activities

In this issue:Editorial Camps cancelled and uncancelled,the Bonfire Bash and BW priorities 3-5Appeal update finale at Burton? 6-7Bonfire Bash Grantham preview 8-9Bookshop biggest auction yet of old canalbooks 10-13Forestry how to chop down trees withoutbreaking the law 14-15Directory WRG and canal societies 16-17Diary camps and working parties 18-20Letters Kent & East Sussex waterways 21-23Camp report Saul Festival camp 24-25KESCRG Wendover and AGM report 26-28BITM what they’ve been up to since 2003 29-31Plant Bungle’s shotblasting his crane 32Navvies News 33-34Noticeboard 35Backfill 36

And next time.......hopefully lots of Canal Camp reports and pho-tographs - but only if you send them in first! Alsothe latest info on the Bonfire Bash and Autumnand Winter Camps, more from the regional groups,forthcoming Xmas digs, and (all being well) thevery last Appeal Update from Liz.

ContentsContentsContentsContentsContents

Cover photo: What are KESCRG up to? See their Wendover dig report on pages 26-27. (photo by EddieJones) Below: WRG BITM working on the Grantham Canal last September. For details of the BonfireBash to be held near this site in November see pages 8-9; for a report on what BITM have been up tosince summer 2003, see pages 29-31.

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Stop Press: just as we were going to print we heard the excellent news that the£11m bid from BW to the Heritage Lottery Fund towards a £25m package to fullyrestore 6 miles of the Cotswold Canals from Stonehouse through Stroud toBrimscombe Port has been provisionally awarded, subject to the rest of the moneybeing raised in the next year. Well done BW, CCT and everyone else involved.

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The Canal Camps programme:

“Rumours of its demise havebeen greatly exaggerated...”

OK let’s start with the bad news, andget it over with: unfortunately we hadto cancel four of the camps duringthe earlier part of the summer pro-gramme. Firstly the Cotswold campgot the chop due to problems withsorting out permissions and plan-ning the work in time for the work to go ahead. (at least in part due to everyone involvedin the Cotswold Canals having to concentrate available resources on doing their best toensure the success of the Heritage Lottery Fund bid, whose announcement is imminent aswe go to press - if you don’t see a ‘stop press’ somewhere saying that they’ve got their £11m,I’m afraid you’ll have to assume they didn’t.) Next, a week on the Hereford & Gloucester anda week on the Wilts & Berks both had to be cancelled as despite the best efforts of Gav andAdrian we were unable to find leadership teams for these two. (Incidentally on the subject ofthe Wilts & Berks camp I have been asked to point out that the information in the lastNavvies was incorrect - it was not true that permissions were not in place for the work,nor that it had been rescheduled for a lock clearance elsewhere: this wrong informationappeared in print due to a misunderstanding that was cleared up just after we went topress. Had we not cancelled it for other reasons, the Camp would have gone ahead onthe original work, with permissions already in place.)

And finally, we felt that the nature of the H&G project was such that a single camp rather than theoriginally-planned fortnight was not going to be enough to see the job through to a sensible stageto leave it, so rather than do half a job or a bodged job, we decided that the best thing was to cancelthe second week too. We hope to re-schedule the job for when we can do it in one hit.

In each case we were very unhappy at having to cancel the camp, we arrived at thedecision reluctantly, and we are sorry to disappoint the volunteers who had booked onthese camps. We hope (although we cannot be absolutely sure) that the rest of thesummer and autumn programme will go ahead as planned. But if there are any changes,they will appear on the WRG website as soon as we know.

So on to the good news: it’s not true that we’ve ‘cancelled half the camps this summer’- there are plenty that are still happening. You can read about the Saul Festival Camp inthis issue, and by the time you receive this magazine several more will have taken placeand the camp reports and photos will be heading my way. (please!) And still to come aretwo weeks restoring bywashes at Tewitfield on the Lancaster Canal, one week puttingthe finishing touches (almost) on the St Johns Backpumping Scheme on the Basing-stoke, and one week working on the Tamworth Road locks on the Lichfield Canal. Seethe website or phone Head Office to see if there’s room for a last-minute booking on anyof these. Then it’s over to Burton for the National Waterways Festival - I’m sure Mooseand Ed will welcome any final offers of assistance from volunteers who haven’t alreadybooked, but do please tell them you’re coming. And then in September we’re planninganother week on the Wilts & Berks, followed by the Grantham in October and back to theW&B for New Year. But speaking of the Grantham....

Bonfire Bash booked for Grantham

Our annual Bonfire Bash, Reunion or whatever you want to call it (‘A bloody good weekend’if it’s anything like the last ten or so...) is now booked for the Grantham Canal on November6-7. This is a site that we haven’t done a lot of work on in recent years, but it looks like it mightbe starting to take off again soon. The work as usual is likely to be mainly scrub and treeclearance from the canal bed, and there’s more info about it on page 8 and a booking formon page 9. Please book early to avoid disappointment: either your disappointment whenyou find it’s booked solid, or our disappointment when we discover that it’s October andwe’ve only got five bookings... and two of those are the leaders... and we haven’t a cluehow many people to cater for! We will bring you more information via the website or thenext Navvies but right at the moment I’m afraid that leader Gav can’t tell you any more ashe is away leading a Canal Camp. (See, I told you they weren’t all cancelled!)

The Appeal

As you can see from the left hand side of this page, The Inland Waterways Association’s appeal TheRight Tool for the Right Job is getting very close to reaching its target of raising £75,000 to re-equip ourvolunteers for the future. So thank you to everyone who has helped the appeal, and we look forward tohopefully reaching our target with a final flurry of fund-raising at the National in Burton. Including...

The Calendar

As I write this, the results of 12 male and 12 female WRGies stripping off on a cold day in March areabout to appear as the WRG Calendar. You can buy it at Burton, or £10 gets you a copy by mail order- see page 7.

The P-word and British Waterways

And the P-word is ‘Priorities’. Now I know we’ve been through all this a couple of years ago, with thearguments about whether the IWAAC exercise in establishing a ‘league table’ of waterway restorationprojects was a good thing for canal restoration or potentially harmful for some projects, and whetheror not IWA (or whoever) should do the same, or whether the whole concept is counterproductive. Butthis time it’s British Waterways who’ve had a go at the idea, and Waterways 2025 is the result.

They have assessed a large number of canal restoration projects according to nine criteria: economicneed, social need, market, local support, financial sustainability, environment & heritage, technicalfeasibility, ‘pressure valve’ value (in taking boats away from congested parts of the system), andimportance as an extension to the existing network They have allocated scores of ‘high’, ‘medium’and ‘low’ for each of these, and divided the schemes into Priority One (greatest network benefit andlikelihood of funding, on which BW will concentrate their resources and aim for early completion),Priority Two (other schemes they see being completed within the next 20 years or so) and PriorityThree (three that they think are either going to take longer than that because they have major prob-lems, or are more peripheral to BW’s network.) Plus a lot that didn’t make it into the list at all.

Priority One schemes: these eleven projects are basically the same ones that BW had alreadyidentified as ‘Tranche Two’ i.e. the ones that would follow on once Rochdale, Huddersfield, the Scot-tish Millennium Link etc were finished in the last couple of years, with a few alterations. The Environ-ment Agency’s Fens Link (Witham to Nene) proposal has been added, as is the River Carron (im-provements to access to the eastern end of the Forth & Clyde Canal) and the Ashby Northern Reaches;the Foxton Inclined Plane has been dropped because BW say they now see it as a ‘heritage/develop-ment’ project to be seen as a visitor destination rather than a waterway restoration - although whetherthat means they still support its reinstatement as a working lift is not entirely clear.

One could take issue with BW about some of the choices of project for Priority One - for example whythe Manchester Bolton & Bury gets in ahead of the Lichfield when (by BW’s own assessment criteria)they score exactly the same number of ‘highs’, ‘mediums’ and ‘lows’. But given that this list has grownout of ‘Tranche Two’, it was always likely to reflect what was in that list.

Priority Two schemes: these nine projects include several that we are currently working on: Lichfield,Wilts & Berks and Mon & Brec for example. But they also exclude a number whose prospects appear atleast as good as some on the list, and it is not obvious why. For example the Herefordshire & Gloucester-shire, Sleaford, Chesterfield and Pocklington, all well-established projects, do not feature anywhere in thelist. Does that mean that BW don’t think the Pocklington will be completed in 21 years? That’s a bitdepressing, given that more than half of it is already restored. Is the H&G not important to the network, justbecause it’s a dead end? (So is the Mont, and nobody’s claiming the Mont’s not important.) And whatabout the Chesterfield? A potential through route (with the Rother Link), a waterway of great heritageinterest, less than 15 miles left to restore, engineering solutions identified and further studies in progress,all the funding advantages of running through an ex-industrial area, but also the advantages to boaters ofrunning through some splendid countryside too. So why won’t BW support it - is it of less importance tothe network than the Mon & Brec, less likely to be funded than Phase 2 of the Cotswolds, or more difficultengineering-wise than the Wilts & Berks? I doubt it. Unfortunately BW haven’t published their assessmentof the schemes that didn’t make it into the list - nor those that are down in the final category...

Priority Three schemes: there are only three of these, and they are the ones BW reckon aren’t goingto be finished in 20 years because they have technical or funding problems or aren’t that important toBW, but still merit inclusion. Apart from a suspicion that the problems of the Higher Avon are muchmore political than technical or funding (David Hutchings would have had it open decades ago if he’dbeen given the chance!) one wonders what the Wey & Arun has done to deserve being in this list -why is it not at least in the same group as the Wilts & Berks and the Grantham?

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Of course no list like this is ever going to please everyone. Howeverobjective you try to be, there are always those who will feel aggrievedthat their canal restoration project has been given a lower priority thanthey think it deserves. But in their current financial position (they recentlyhad several million arbitrarily lopped-off their government grant), BW arelikely to have limited resources to put into canal restoration. (not to men-tion a chief exec who - while I’m not entirely convinced by suggestionsthat he is ‘an accountant who isn’t the slightest bit interested in restora-tion’ - clearly isn’t quite so pro-restoration as his predecessor) So it is notunreasonable (if indeed it is right for them to be involved in restoration atall - some would say they should save their effort for keeping the naviga-ble system in good order) that they concentrate their support on a rela-tively small number of projects - such as those in Priority One. But whatis the point of Priority Two and Priority Three? What real purpose does itserve for them to try to tell us which schemes we in the waterway restora-tion movement will complete (with support from BW once they’ve finishedwhat they’re working on now) in the next ten, twenty or thirty years andwhich ones we won’t. None, as far as I can see - all it will do is causeneedless antipathy between restoration projects, at a time when they leastneed it, as it seems that restoration is no longer ‘flavour of the month’.

But do the supporters of the schemes that have been omitted or given a lowpriority really need to feel hard done by? I remember when BW involvementin a waterway restoration project was seen widely as a handicap - if notquite the ‘kiss of death’ that it maybe had been a few years earlier. I recallwhen NWPG - despite being an offshoot of the Kennet & Avon Canal Trust- spent their weekends on the Basingstoke and other non-BW canals be-cause they couldn’t get permission to work on their own. I also rememberwhen volunteer work on the Huddersfield generally took place on the few non-BW bits. And I rememberdriving 200 miles for a weekend’s work on another northern canal, only to find that the day before, some-one in BW had decided not to give us permission to do the work after all. (In fact we claimed that theperson BW had told hadn’t managed to get in touch with the person we were working with and thereforethe message hadn’t got through in time - no mobile phones in those days, so we got away with it.)

Of course those days are long gone - BW have gone from being anti-restoration, through being notterribly pro-restoration, through being maybe just a little too keen on nicking the credit for other peo-ple’s restoration work, to the point where they have been championing restoration projects in recentyears and entering into all kinds of partnerships with canal societies and other groups to get thecanals reopened, providing us with assistance, advice and training on the Droitwich and so on. Wehave ended up in a situation where BW involvement has been something to be welcomed.

But just lately, I’ve started to wonder if we’re slipping backwards a bit towards the bad old days. In the lastissue Mike Palmer mentioned ‘the ridiculous assumption that volunteers equals risk’. Recently a canalcamp almost didn’t happen because BW initially insisted that a lock chamber must be scaffolded beforework could start. That wouldn’t have been an issue if the work had actually involved restoring the chamber,but apparently it was repairs to the bywash, and the scaffolding was deemed necessary simply to stop ourvolunteers falling in the lock when they stood back to admire their work. A mere 8ft tall fence was deemedinadequate. (Fortunately in this case common sense prevailed so the camp could go ahead.) And theCotswold Camp was cancelled because of problems sorting out permissions in time, as everyone wasbusy elsewhere. Would we avoid some of these problems by sticking to projects not involving BW?

At the risk of being accused of being overly cynical, might one suggest that in fact it is the Priority Oneschemes that are actually in the worst position with BW already getting in the way of volunteer work,that Priority Two at least have a few years to work on their restorations without outside interference,that Priority Three may have two decades untroubled by BW bureaucracy, and that those not listed atall are in the best position, with no risk of BW sticking their oar in for the foreseeable future?

Please tell me that I’m being over-cynical. We know a lot of good people in BW who are very pro-restoration. I would very much like BW involvement to be able to help bring the next generation ofprojects forward, as I believe it has with many of the current ones. But right now I fear that you mayhave a difficult task convincing some of the more sceptical elements in the waterways movement thatthis is likely to happen.

Martin Ludgate

Priority One:Ashby (Phase 1)Bedford-Milton Keynes,Bow Back Rivers,Cotswolds (Phase 1)DroitwichFens LinkLiverpool LinkManchester Bolton & BuryMontgomeryLancasterRiver Carron

Priority Two:Ashby (Phase 2)Cotswolds (Phase 2)GranthamLichfieldMon & BrecRiver LevenSankeyWendoverWilts & Berks

Priority Three:Slough-Windsor linkHigher AvonWey & Arun

AppealAppealAppealAppealAppealThe Right Tool for theRight Job

Appeal Update July 2004

We’re nearly there folks!! Currently we haveraised just over £70,000! That’s only five grandshort of the target of raising £75,000 to re-equipWRG’s volunteers for the future.

So it seems an appropriate time for some reflection,as this will be my penultimate update. (Hurrah!)

It doesn’t seem very long ago that I sat in a pubwith some folks from IWA council, including Judeand Mike, and started planning this appeal. Theoriginal idea was much altered during the plan-ning process, but eventually we went to the NECOutdoor Show in February 2003 and launchedthe appeal, with quite a lot of nice press coverage,and wore those T-shirts for the first time. At thatpoint it seemed like an enormous amount of money,and although I had a few ideas, they didn’t seemlike nearly enough to buy even half a minibus.

To my delight other people seemed to have lotsmore ideas than me, and also the willingness torun with them. Soon the cheques started flood-ing in. One of the highlights of the last 18 months,and one of the most lucrative events, was the RaceNight at the Mont reopening. That summer wetook the WRG appeal display to lots events, andtold people about our shopping list. Loads of themresponded with their cheque-books, and westarted taking photos of new bits of kit with theirdonators, and then sent the kit off to canals aroundthe country to work.

The National Waterways Festival at Beale Parklast year was a fantastic success, particularly froma fund and publicity raising point of view! Viv andIan’s Appealing food stall, the Panto, Worcesterthe alcoholic bear... and who can forget Bungleas the panto dame on the tractor? By then end, Iwas feeling much more confident that we couldraise the rest of the money and then get on withrestoring the canals.

And so it has proved to be – ideas and chequeshave continued to flood in. The barn dance inFebruary marked the 1 year point, and nearly 2thirds of the target amount had been raised. Atsome point in March some of us were to be seenin less-than-usual states of dress – and the WRGcalendar will be available very soon. Unless, ofcourse, the models decide to buy the entirestock…

A cheque for £2512 to the Appeal is presented to MIke Palmer by Alan Chetwyn and John Moss of Stoke onTrent IWA, accompaniedby BBC radio presenter John Waite and his famous cousin Terry Waite.

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For several reasons I have a bit more room thismonth to mention a few notable donations. Hotoff the press is a cheque for over £2500 from TheInland Waterways Association’s Stoke-on-Trentbranch, and another from Northampton branchfor £1000, bringing the total from them to £2500.We have been exceedingly well supported by allthe various IWA regions and branches, with do-nations of over £1000 from Chester & district,Hertfordshire, and Lichfield, as well as generousamounts from Birmingham etc branch, Cam-bridge, Chiltern, Kent & East Sussex, Ipswich,Leicestershire, Merseyside & West Lancs, Mid-dlesex, Milton Keynes, North Lancs & Cumbria,Northumbria, Nottingham & Derby, Peterborough,Shrewsbury, South London, South Wales, War-wickshire, and West Riding Branches. Thank youall very much, and I know you’ve done some ex-citing and fun things to help raise the money. Weknow just how important our ‘armchair support-ers’ are.

What has been particularly nicehas been donations from CanalSocieties, who hopefully see in-vestment in us as investing intheir own canals, and also fromboaters and boat associations,who will also benefit from resto-ration work. These include (inno particular order): the AshbyCanal Association, the Associa-tion of Waterway Cruising Clubs,the Chesterfield Canal Trust, Dud-ley Canal Trust, Friends of theLockway, H&G Canal Trust,Islwyn Canal Association,Macclesfield Canal Society,Mon, Brec & Abergavenny Ca-nal Trust, Montgomery Water-way Restoration Trust, Residen-tial Boat Owners Association,River Weaver Navigation Soci-ety, Sankey Canal RestorationSociety, Thrupp Boat Club,WRGbc, Weaver Motor BoatClub.

Our corporate partners havealso been most generous, somethrough matching funding forour volunteers’ effor ts atfundraising. These include (in noparticular order) Barclays BankPLC, Fox’s Marina, GroudsBridge Marina Ltd, RacepartsUnlimited, Riverside HolidaysLtd, Scottish and Southern En-ergy plc, Southern HemisphereSports Ltd, The WaterwaysTrust, Vodafone.

What a lot of friends we have! Thank you all,very, very much.

So there is still a few thousand to go, and we hopeto wrap things up after the National WaterwaysFestival at Burton-upon-Trent on the August BankHoliday weekend. At Burton expect to see the Ap-pealing Food stand again – this time with mesmelling of onions! The calendar will be on sale,and we plan a special celebration – watch out fordetails nearer the time! I know there are still somemonies planned from other canal societies, sowe’ll certainly accept money after the official close– just like all the best appeals. If you’ve beenplanning something and want help, advice of leaf-lets then please let me know.

See you at Burton. Lots of love, Dr. Liz

Liz [email protected]

Order your WRG Calendar now!

Remember all those WRG Calendar Girls and Calendar Boysexposing themselves to the elements (and in one case, toall the passengers on the passing steam train!) back inMarch? 24 of WRG’s finest, photographed with not a lot on - bynone other than top waterways photographer Derek Pratt - areabout to appear as the WRG 2005 Nude Calendar . This will goon sale at the National at Burton on Trent, or alternatively youcan order your copy now by sending your name and address anda cheque for £10 (including postage and packing) to WRG Cal-endar, IWA, PO Box 114, Rickmansworth WD3 1ZY. Pleasemake your cheques payable to The Inland Waterways Asso-ciation and allow 28 days for delivery. Go on, you can afford it -it all goes to the Appeal.

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BonfBonfBonfBonfBonfiririririre Bashe Bashe Bashe Bashe BashBook now fBook now fBook now fBook now fBook now for a fun wor a fun wor a fun wor a fun wor a fun weekeekeekeekeekend onend onend onend onend onthe Grthe Grthe Grthe Grthe Grantham in Noantham in Noantham in Noantham in Noantham in Novvvvvember!ember!ember!ember!ember!

Announcing the Bonfire Bash 2004

Grantham Canal, November 6th-7th

For those who haven’t been on one before, theBonfire Bash is our annual end-of-season get-to-gether and major work party.

Usually well over 100 volunteers turn up and spenda weekend helping to give a canal restoration projecta big push - as well as spending the Saturday nighthaving a big party and getting together with all thefolks we’ve met on Canal Camps this summer andpeople from the regional groups that we haven’tseen for ages, and generally having a good time.

It’s called a Bonfire Bash because (a) it’s conven-iently close to Bonfire Night and we sometimesmark this with appropriate celebrations and (b)the work usually involves scrub-clearance... whichusually means big bonfires on site.

But even if we can’t guarantee to supply any bon-fires at all, we still call it a Bonfire Bash, and wecan still guarantee that it will be a good weekend.

Having bashed all the available scrub in past yearson the Wilts & Berks, Basingstoke, Wey & Arun,Manchester Bolton & Bury and elsewhere, wemove to pastures (or jungles) new this year: theGrantham Canal.

The work

Exact details of the site are still being worked out,but it looks like the work will be the usual scruband tree clearance from thebed of the canal, with twolengths, both about half amile long, having been iden-tified as possibilities. We al-ready have permission toclear one length nearCropwell Butler (close towhere the last Grantham Ca-nal Camp cleared out a flightof three locks in 2002), andwe are looking at also tack-ling a second section nearColston Bassett.

The purpose

Both of the lengths of canal that we are likely tobe working on are on the ‘dry section’ towards thewestern end of the canal. With sections of canalalready restored and in-water near the eastern(Grantham) end, doing some serious clearancework at the west end will not only prepare theway for future re-watering of this length too, butshould also encourage the local authorities includ-ing Nottinghamshire County Council to take aninterest in supporting (and maybe funding) somemore restoration work on their part of the canal.

The accommodation

We’ve provisionally identified a large village hall atColston Bassett that should be big enough to dothe job, and is convenient for the work sites. It also- according to the local canal society - has the addedattraction of a real ale pub within 50 yards, althoughI expect that we’ll make our own arrangements forentertainment and beer on the Saturday night.

Booking

If you want to come to the Bonfire Bash, pleasefill in the booking form opposite and send it off tohead office with your cheque.

Further information

Full details including joining instructions will besent as soon as we have them to everyone whobooks in. Further information including confirma-tion of accommodation will appear on the websitewww.wrg.org.uk and in the next issue of Nav-vies - but please don’t wait till then before youbook! If you know you want to come (and you do,don’t you?) send your form in right away - themore people that book in earlier, the better ideawe have of how many people are coming, andthe easier it is for us to plan the weekend to makesure you all have enough work, enough food, suit-able accommodation, and everything else that willmake this a weekend to remember.

Martin Ludgate

Grantham

The Grantham Canal 1797-1936: 33 miles, 18 locks

Nottingham

Cropwell Butler

ColstonBassett

Cotgrave

Hickling

WoolsthorpeBelvoir Castle

River Trent

I would like to attend the 2004 WRG Bonfire Bash on the Grantham Canalon November 6th-7th

Forename: Surname:

Address:

email:

Phone:

Any special dietary requirements?

I require accommodation on Friday night / Saturday night / both nights

I enclose payment of £ (please make cheques payable to ‘WRG’) for food

(cost is £10 for the whole weekend, based on £2 for each meal.)

How will you be travelling to the Bonfire Bash?

Do you want to work with volunteers from one of this year’s Canal Camps or from oneof the regional groups? If so, which camp or group?

Do you suffer from any illness, such as epilepsy or diabetes, about which youshould know, or are you receiving treatment or under medical supervision for anycondition YES/NO If yes, please attach details on a covering letter.

In the unlikely event that you should be injured, who should we contact?

Name: Phone:

Signed:

(parent’s signature also required if aged under 18):

Please send this form to:

Bonfire Bash Bookings, WRG, PO Box 114, Rickmansworth WD3 1ZY

waterwayrecoverygroup

WRG Reunion Bonfire Bash 2004

NATIONAL CO-ORDINATING BODYFOR VOLUNTARY LABOUR ON THEINLAND WATERWAYS OF BRITAIN

BookBookBookBookBookshopshopshopshopshopBigBigBigBigBiggggggest eest eest eest eest evvvvver WRer WRer WRer WRer WRG auction ofG auction ofG auction ofG auction ofG auction ofwwwwwaaaaaterwterwterwterwterwaaaaayyyyys books books books books booksssss

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WRG Book Auction – August 2004

Over the past few months we have collected morewaterway books for fund-raising. As usual, wehave decided that the best way to sell them off isto auction them through the pages of Navvies -with all the proceeds going to help fund WRG’sCanal Camps. All the books (except where stated)are in fair second hand condition. The reservessuggested are the minimum that we would ac-cept and are approximately half the price you

might see from a specialised book dealer. You are invited to make your bids (in multiples of 50pplease). Simply list down the Lot number (the number on the left hand side) and the price you areprepared to pay for each book or other item being auctioned. The bidder offering the highest price foreach lot gets the goods at the price bid. In the event of two equal bids, the first one received wins. Allproceeds go to WRG, so you can afford to be generous. All bids should be sent to Waterway Recov-ery Group Auction, P O Box 114, RICKMANSWORTH, WD3 1ZY to be received no later than 15thSeptember 2004. Successful bidders will be notified shortly afterwards. Postage and packing isextra: £1.90 where the total of your successful bids is under £11.00 and £3.75 where the total of yoursuccessful bids is over £11 (UK only).Lot Title / Author (or other description) Pages Date Reserve1 The BP Book Of Industrial Archaeology – Neil Cossons. Hardback. 496 1975 £8.002 The Canals Of Yorkshire & North East England: Volume 1 - Charles Hadfield. With black and

white photographs. One of the Canals of the British Isles history series. 254 1972 £10.003 The Canals Of Yorkshire & North East England: Volume 2 - Charles Hadfield. Hardback. With black

and white photographs. One of the Canals of the British Isles history series. 250 1973 £10.004 The Canals Of The East Midlands – Charles Hadfield. Hardback with photographs. Area covered

includes the Grand Union Canal and part of London. 294 1970 £10.005 The Canals Of South West England – Charles Hadfield. Hardback. One of the Canals of the British

Isles history series. 206 1967 £10.006 The Canals Of The West Midlands – Charles Hadfield. Hardback. One of the Canals of the British

Isles history series. 351 1977 £6.007 The Canals Of Eastern England – David Charles. Hardback. With pictures and photographs.One

of the Canals of the British Isles history series. 368 1977 £8.008 Canal Boat & Boaters – DJ Smith. Hardback. With line drawings and photographs.

132 1973 £3.009 A Pictorial History Of Canals – DD Gladwin Hardback 143 1977 £3.0010 The BP Book Of Industrial Archaeology – Neil Cossons. Hardback. With photographs.

384 1987 £4.0011 Leontyne – Richard Goodwin. Hardback. By barge from London to Vienna. Good condition.

219 1989 £3.0012 Snowdonia - Anthony Hopkins. Hardback. A call to protect this national treasure. With colour photo-

graphs. Good condition. 112 1993 £3.0013 Worst Journey In The Midlands – Sam Llewellyn. One man in an ancient open boat in the wettest

October on record. 191 1984 £3.0014 Water Rallies – David Owen. Hardback. Stories of his cruises to rallies in the 1960s as part of the

fight to keep the canals open. Includes photographs. 144 1969 £3.0015 The Canals Of North West England: Volume 1 – Charles Hadfield & Gordon Biddle. One of the

Canals of the British Isles history series. With photographs. 236 1970 £10.0016 The Canals Of North West England: Volume 2 – Charles Hadfield & Gordon Biddle. One of the

Canals of the British Isles history series. With photographs. 230 1970 £10.0017 The Canals Of Britain – DD Gladwin. Hardback. Covers the rise and steady decline of the water-

ways. 253 1973 £8.0018 Bread Upon The Waters – David Blagrove. Hardback. 224 1984 £4.0019 The Canals Of South Wales & The Border – Charles Hadfield. Hardback. One of the Canals of the

British Isles history series. 272 1977 £10.0020 English Canals: Pt 1 A Concise History – DD Gladwin & JM White. Hardback. 64 1967 £2.00

21 Tales of the Cornish Wreckers – John Vivian. Softback. Text, with old pictures and some old maps.47 1969 £1.00

22 The Miners – Anthony Burton. Softback. This is a vivid, superbly illustrated account of their work,their life and their struggles. 175 1976 £3.00

23 Canal Architecture In Britain – Frances Pratt. Softback. Informative text and lots of colour photos40 1980 £0.50

24 Guinness Guide To Waterways Of Western Europe – Hugh McKnight. Hardback. This lavishlyillustrated celebration of canals and rivers is designed to whet the appetite of every aspiring inlandnavigator. 230 1978 £4.00

25 Industrial Archaeology Review – Oxford University Press. Softback. Volume 1. Number 2. Spring1977. 198 1977 £2.00

26 Industrial Archaeology of Cornwall – A C Todd and Peter Laws. Hardback. This book includesmaps and over thirty magnificent photographs. 288 1972 £2.00

27 The “Come to Cornwall” Guide – Official County Guide. Softback. Includes black and white photosand old tourism adverts and information. 96 £0.50

28 Slow Boat Through England – Frederic Doerflinger. Hardback. “A book for the questing novice, acomprehensive guide to getting the most out of your holidays.” 253 1970 £0.50

29 The Industrial Archaeology of Scotland (Lowlands and Borders) – John Hume. Hardback. Cov-ering information on transport and industry. Contains text, pictures and a few old maps.

275 1976 £1.0030 A Canal and Armchair Book – John Gagg. Hardback. “A fascinating feast of items from Britain’s

canals, illustrated and served in an easily digested fashion.” 144 1975 £1.0031 The Canaller’s Bedside Book – John Gagg. Hardback. This book gives you details and advice you

need when you plan your holidays. Includes text and pictures. 150 1973 £1.0032 Canals Revived – Roger Squires. Hardback. The story of the early days of the Waterways Restora-

tion movement. 185 1979 £1.0033 London’s Waterways – Martyn Denney. Hardback. This detailed survey of the history and structure

in the Greater London area includes all the major canals and channels in use from the ninth centuryto the present day. Includes photos 192 1977 £2.00

34 Marine Conversion – Nigel Warren. Hardback. Car engine conversions for boats. Includes picturesand charts 148 1977 £1.00

35 The Boat Museum – Ellesmere Port. Softback. A short guide to the boats and the buildings. Includesphotographs. 100 £0.50

36 The Past At Work - Anthony Burton. Hardback. A reconstruction of our industrial past. Includescolour and black and white photographs. 175 1980 £3.00

37 Inland Waterways Of Great Britain – L.A Edwards. Hardback. Standard reference book givinginformation on all waterways in Britain. Includes a fold out map. 447 1972 £8.00

38 Waterways – Sights To See – Charles Hadfield. Hardback. “This inviting book is for the family thatexplores by car rather than boat.” Includes photographs. 1976 £1.00

39 Two Miles In A Minute – O.S Nock. Hardback. The story behind the conception and operation ofBritain’s High Speed and Advanced Passenger Trains. Includes photographs.184 1980 £1.00

40 Canals In Camera – John Gagg. Hardback. A personal “canal-cruising” look, in words and pictures,over almost the whole of the canal systems. 128 1970 £1.00

41 Railway Archaeology – O.S Nock. Hardback. “Superbly illustrated, this book will make essentialreading for those interested in individual, and indeed national, history, as well as the ardent railwayenthusiasts.” 191 1981 £3.00

42 Navigable Waterways – LTC Rolt. Softback. History of the canals, written by the famous waterwayspioneer. 188 1973 £2.00

43 Mines Of Wales – Thomas Spargo. Softback. Their present position and prospects. 79 1973 £1.0044 Exploring Our Industrial Past – Kenneth Hudson. Softback. Includes pictures and information on

joining and forming societies. 214 1975 £2.0045 Plain Sailing – Charles Gibson. Softback. This book takes nothing for granted and starts with the

simplest problems of rowing and sailing and how to handle larger craft. 158 1963 £1.0046 Discovering Canals In Britain – Peter L. Smith. Softback. Good Condition. Assists in planning of

holidays. 96 £1.0047 Mining in the Lake Counties – W.T Shaw. Softback. A chronicle and the history of mining ventures,

with accounts of miners’ lives. 128 1975 £1.00

48 Slow Boat Through Pennine Waters – Frederic Doerflinger. Softback. “A favourite book for boat-men naturalists, canal preservationists and local historians.” 254 1972 £0.50

49 Rivers In Britain – J Gagg. Hardback. Offers simple and accurate information with clear line pic-tures and photos. 63 1974 £0.50

50 London’s Waterways Guide – Chris Cove Smith. Softback. All the essential information for cruisingon the rivers and canals in the Greater London Area 222 1977 £1.00

51 Lead Mining In The Yorkshire Dales – Arthur Raistrick. Softback. An account of the area’s leadmining. With photographs. 29 1972 £0.50

52 Nicholson’s Real Ale Guide To The Waterways – Softback. Once the beer-drinking boater’s Bible,now more of a historic document dating from when real ale was hard to find. 159 1970s £0.50

53 The Smelting Mills – Arthur Raistrick. Hardback. The lead industry of Wensleydale and Swaledale.120 1975 £1.00

54 Echoes Of A Canal Travelling Man – J.H Burman. Hardback. Includes a fold out map.46 1981 £0.50

55 Exploring The Kennet & Avon Canal – Hawk Publication. Includes text, pictures, photographs anda fold out map. 39 1974 £0.50

56 Back Door Britain – Anthony Burton. Softback. The story of a 1000-mile journey by caal.188 1978 £2.00

57 Hidden Haunts In Wales – Softback. You own passport to the Welshman’s Wales. Includes mapsand pictures. 32 1974 £1.00

58 Tales Of The Cornish Fishermen – Cyril Noall. Softback. Includes some black and white photo-graphs 46 1970 £1.00

59 Industrial Archaeology Of Cornwall – WH Curnow. Softback. Mines, Smelting, Railways, Ports,Quarries, China Clay, Foundries, Waterwheels. 20 £1.00

60 Cornwall’s Ports & Harbours – Cyril Noall. Softback. Includes text and photographs48 1970 £1.00

61 Cornwall’s Old Mines – H.V Williams. Softback. Includes photographs. 46 £1.0062 Know The Ropes - Boat Owner. Softback. Includes diagrams. 26 1975 £0.5063 Ropemakers – WR Outwaite & Son. Fold out sheet with diagrams. 1 £0.5064 A Walker On The Pennine Way – Colin Walker. Softback. Fully illustrated with captions. From Mal-

ham to Hawes. 50 1974 £0.5065 A Walker On The Pennine Way – Colin Walker. Softback. Full illustrated with captions. From Hawes

to Middleton. 50 1974 £0.5066 Beamish – North of England Open Air Museum. Includes colour photographs

30 £1.0067 Walks For Motorists In The Yorkshire Dales – Ramblers’ Association. Includes photographs and

small maps. 83 1970 £0.5068 Settle and North Craven – Settle Publicity Committee. Softback. Including Austwick, Clapham,

Ingleton, Malhamsdale, North Ribblesdale and the Three Peaks, with walks and motoring runs. In-cludes photographs. 57 1979 £1.00

69 Around Ingleton and Clapham – Ron and Lucie. Softback. Hinson. A guide with photographs.32 1970 £0.50

70 Ironbridge Gorge – Softback. Includes, maps pictures and text 27 £1.0071 The Story of Cornwall’s Engine houses – DB Barton. Softback. 40 1970 £1.0072 Waterways Museum – Pictures from the museum at Stoke Bruerne. Softback 30 £0.5073 British Waterways: Cruising on the Llangollen Canal – Inland Cruising Booklet. Softback. Hurleston

Locks to Llantysilio. Includes a fold out map. 36 1970 £1.0074 Boatyards & Boatbuildings – Robert J. Wilson. Softback. Fully illustrated. 32 1974 £1.0075 Waterways World Guide – Staffordshire & Worcestershire. Spiral bound with maps

20 1981 £0.5076 Canal Tunnels – John Gagg. Softback. Looking at inland waterways. Includes photographs

32 1976 £0.5077 Canal Barges & Narrow Boats – Peter L. Smith 32 1983 £1.0078 The Upper Avon Navigation – D. Hutchings & D. Higgins. Softback spiral bound. A guide with

pictures. 44 £0.50

page 12

79 Stanford’s River Thames- - From Richmond to Lechlade. Fold out map. 1 £0.5080 Cardiganshire – Its Mines & Miners – Simon J.S Hughes 49 1976 £1.0081 Waterways Restored – PJG Ransom. Hardback. 21 waterways covered. Including pictures.

179 1973 £2.0082 Voyage In A Bowler Hat – Hugh Malet. Softback. An account of an incredible voyage.

251 1985 £3.0083 Slow Boat Through Pennine Waters – Frederic Doerflinger. Hardback. Practical guide to getting

the most from boating holidays. 254 1971 £1.0084 Canals & Their Architecture – Robert Harris. Hardback. Excursions into architecture.

223 1969 £4.0085 English Rivers & Canals – Paul Atterbury. Hardback. An account of the importance of waterways.

152 1993 £4.0086 Canal & River Craft – Hugh McKnight. Hardback. Pictorial record of commercial craft which once

worked on the network of canals 112 1969 £4.0087 The Great Towpath Walk – Brian Bearshaw. Hardback. From London to York. Illustrated.

208 1988 £2.0088 Portrait Of The Severn – JHB Peel. Hardback. Includes photographs 206 1980 £3.0089 The Most Extraordinary District In The World: Ironbridge & Coalbrookdale – Barrie Trinder.

Hardback 138 1988 £3.0090 Journeys Of The Swan – John Liley. Hardback. Entertaining account of the author’s travels on a

working narrowboat in the early 1960s, with a stress on the campaign to save the waterways191 1971 £8.00

91 The Great Days Of The Canals – Anthony Burton. Hardback. A nostalgic journey through the pastof Britain’s Canals. 224 1988 £6.00

92 The Archaeology Of The Montgomeryshire Canal – Stephen Hughes.Softback. A guide and studyin Waterways Archaeology. 168 1989 £5.00

93 Landscape With Figures – LTC Rolt. Hardback. The final part of the autobiography of one of thepioneers of the waterways movement. 246 1992 £2.00

94 Navigable Waterways – LTC Rolt. Softback. 186 1973 £2.0095 The Canal Age – Charles Hadfield. Softback. A richly evocative account of the Canal Age in Britain,

Europe & North America 222 1968 £4.0096 Back Door Britain – Anthony Burton. Hardback. With photographs. The story of a 1000-mile jour-

ney by canal. 189 1977 £4.0097 The Flower Of Gloster – E. Temple Thurston. Hardback. Reprint of the classic late 19th Century

account of an early canal pleasure boat journey. With pictures. 244 1972 £4.0098 Voyage Into England – John Seymour. Hardback. With photographs. Exploring Britain’s waterways

in the 1960s. 159 1966 £8.0099 Water Highways – David E. Owen. Hardback. Accounts of cruises around the waterways of the

North West and further afield in 1961. 140 1967 £3.00100 Canals In Colour – Anthony Burton. Hardback. Lots of colour pictures and informative text.

175 1974 £2.00101 Canals – Warren Farnworth. Softback. Pictures, text and photographs. 96 1973 £2.00102 Lock Keeper’s Daughter – A Worcestershire Canal Childhood. 159 1990 £3.00103 Towpaths Of England – Brain Bearshaw. Hardback. With illustrations. 192 1985 £2.00104 The Kennet & Avon Canal – Kenneth R. Clew. Hardback. Story of the canal including its construc-

tion. 224 1985 £10.00105 Through Britain On Country Roads – Peter Brerton. Hardback. Ideal guide for those who take

pleasure in driving along Britain’s quiet roads. Includes pictures and maps. 320 1988 £3.00106 Journey Without End – David Bolton. Hardback. A voyage through England’s waterways.

191 1987 £3.00107 5000 Miles 3000 Locks – John Gagg. Hardback. Includes black and white photographs 2 diagrams

and a map 170 1973 £2.00

The winning bids will be listed in Navvies 207

See page 33 for a list of the winning bids of the book auction that appeared in Navvies 205.

page 13

FFFFForororororestryestryestryestryestryWRWRWRWRWRG FG FG FG FG Forororororestry Testry Testry Testry Testry Team geam geam geam geam go intoo intoo intoo intoo intothe lethe lethe lethe lethe legggggalities ofalities ofalities ofalities ofalities of tr tr tr tr tree-fee-fee-fee-fee-fellingellingellingellingelling

Trees and the Law

WRG Forestry have had a few felling enquiriesrecently which has prompted - nay spurred - meinto scribe mode.

I think now is as good a time as any to remindourselves of IWA/WRG environmental codes andto touch on the subject of trees and the law. Sohere goes…

IWA’s Technical Restoration Handbook containsa couple of sections relevant to this subject. Inthe Legal Aspects of Restoration section thereare details of the various statutory designatedareas: more about this later. In the Wildlife Con-servation section can be found good advice onrestoration work and conservation issues. Iwouldn’t exactly class felling as ‘scrub bashing’but the principles are the same and I quote “toavoid disturbance to nesting birds, ‘scrub bash-ing’ should not normally be undertaken during thenesting season (April to June)”. This is repeatedin WRG’s Practical Restoration Handbook article‘Vegetation Clearance’ and I think Spencer’s avoid-ance period of early March to August is probablynearer the mark, with spring seemingly comingearlier every year.

So let’s create a hypothetical case on the old Nitts& Stuffs Canal where a couple of mature SalixHypothetica are causing problems to the over-worked and underpaid working party organiser:seems familiar?

OK so you have a cunning plan to ‘remove’ thesetrees so that you can get on with the proper job ofrestoration during the up-and-coming WRG Sum-mer Solstice Spectacular, but do you know any-thing about the law relating to trees?

The following section is in no way intended to bethe definitive version of tree law it is intended asa brief guide only. I can supply more comprehen-sive details to those that require them.

English Law is divided into Common and Stat-ute law and what follows is my attempt to high-light the bits of the law that you are likely to comeinto contact with.

Common law shouldn’t really bother us: it dealswith ownership, boundary, public nuisance andtrespass issues. If you’ve planned correctly, youshouldn’t come into contact with it.

Statute Law does concern us though. This canbe quite heavy going, and again I’ve only touchedon the more common issues.

Town and Country Planning Act 1990 relatesto trees protected by a tree preservation order(TPO) and contains the legislation to protect theimmediate pruning and felling of trees containedwithin a Conservation Area. There is a max. pen-alty of £20,000 per tree if you misbehave!

First port of call then is your Local Planning Au-thority (LPA) either at local or county level; mostby now have their own tree officer who can giveyou all sorts of advice - and it’s free. Here youcan ascertain if your canal is in a designated area- for example a conservation area or (please no!)a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in whichcase you will need to speak to English Nature(EN). A map of the work area and grid referenceswill be really helpful to the tree officer.

‘I suppose now isn’t the best time to ask whetherthis one has a Tree Preservation Order on it?’ WRGFT at work dealing with a tricky tree at Froghall Ba-sin - having checked it with the Tree Officer first!

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FFFFForororororestryestryestryestryestrySparSparSparSparSparkkkkky tells us how to ay tells us how to ay tells us how to ay tells us how to ay tells us how to avvvvvoid aoid aoid aoid aoid a£20,000 f£20,000 f£20,000 f£20,000 f£20,000 fine or 6 months in jailine or 6 months in jailine or 6 months in jailine or 6 months in jailine or 6 months in jail

Six weeks notice is needed by your LPA for workto be undertaken in a conservation area, but thereare exemptions. If your tree or trees are protectedby a TPO my strong advice is NOT to commenceany work without prior consultation and a site visitwith the tree officer; again there are exemptionsbut be warned: £20,000 penalty. You should beable to form a good working relationship with yourtree officer: they are there to help. I have a full listof tree officers if you are having difficulty makingcontact.

Forestry Act 1967 will affect you if you are fell-ing more than 5 cubic metres in any calendarquarter. You will then need a felling licence fromthe Forestry Commission. Your tree officer canagain be helpful, or you can contact WRG FT,or you can do it yourself. Contact your local FCConservancy or visit www.forestry.gov.uk. Ap-plications can take up to ten weeks and will in-volve a site visit - and by the way, 5cuM is not alot of standing timber. Penalties here are a fineof £2,500 or twice the value of the trees, which-ever is the highest. Again, there are exemptions.You think it’s all over - well it isn’t, yet.

Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and Coun-tryside Rights of Way Act 2000 . This to me is thebig one: the law that is catching out more and morepeople including those who should know better.

It is a safe bet that if you are working in an areaclose by a right of way some passer-by will askquestions about the work you are undertaking.This subject is worthy of its own article. So getyour documentation in order and pay close atten-tion to the next subject.

The first piece of legislation (WACA) protectsmany plants and animals.

Wild birds: their nests and eggs are protectedby law and it is therefore an offence to intention-ally kill any wild bird, to damage or destroy a nestwhilst in use or being built.

CRoW goes further by saying it is an offence tointentionally or recklessly disturb any wild birdwhilst nest building, or at (or near) a nest contain-ing eggs or young, or disturb the dependent youngof such a bird. Beware the word ‘reckless’ whichis well known in law. A simple scenario: your locallandowner gives you the OK to fell trees, you no-tice birds flying in and out of said trees but youcarry on felling.

Down comes the tree, and so do several nests,eggs and chicks with seemingly bewildered par-ents flying above. Is this reckless? Well of courseit is, and it carries a fine of up to £5,000 and or asix month prison sentence.

Bats, well I’ve been called worse. Similar legisla-tion to birds in that the law protects them, theiryoung and their roosts. A roost is interpreted as“any structure or place which is used for shelteror protection” and bats don’t need to be in themat the time. It is almost impossible to tell from theground if bats are roosting in a particular tree, soif in doubt (and remember that R-word ‘reckless’),make contact with EN and your local bat group.WRG FT again can help here with names andcontacts.

Badgers. The following is a summary of the of-fences contained within The Protection of Badg-ers Act 1992. It is an offence to interfere with asett by damaging or destroying it; obstruct accessto, or any entrance of a badger sett; or disturb abadger when it is occupying a sett.

If you want to work on trees which are adjacentto, or likely to affect a badger sett you may needto apply for a licence from EN.

Plants. To summarise very briefly, it is an offencefor anyone to “intentionally pick, uproot, destroyany wild plant on Schedule 8-Section 13”. This isa long list!

If in doubt contact your local wildlife trust and EN.

The above will limit and may prohibit certain treepruning or felling work during Spring and Summer.Birds will nest in trees and shrubs between Marchand August each year, while bats will use roost sitesin trees between April and September, dependingon weather conditions. Some species may hiber-nate in large old trees during the winter months.

So when is the ideal time to fell? Probably aboutOctober 3rd at 2:37pm although not on thePrunus species or you could end up spreadingsilver leaf disease...

There is no ideal time, each case is different andwith a bit of forethought and good planning eventhe Nitts and Stuffs will be restored from some-where to somewhere else eventually.

Graham ‘Sparky’ RobinsonWRG Forestry Team

BARNSLEY, DEARNE & DOVECANAL TRUSTJune Backhouse, 39 Hill St,Elsecar, Barnsley S74 8EN01226 743383www.bddct.org.uk

BIRMINGHAM CANALNAVIGATIONS SOCIETYJeff Barley, 17 SunnysideWalsall Wood, W Midlands01543 373284www.bcn-society.org.uk

BUCKINGHAM CANAL SOCTony Collins18 Skeats Wharf, PennylandMilton Keynes MK15 8AY01908 604731email:[email protected]

BUGSWORTH BASIN (IWPS)Ian EdgarBrowside Farm, Mudhurst LaneLyme Handley, Whaley BridgeHigh Peak SK23 7BT01663 732493email: [email protected]/iwps/index.htm

CALDON & UTTOXETERCANALS TRUSTAlison SmedleyHazelhurst CottageDenford, LeekStaffs ST13 7JT01538 385388email:[email protected]

CHESTERFIELD CANAL TRUSTMick Hodgetts31 Pottery LaneChesterfield S41 9BH01246 620695www.chesterfield-canal-trust.org.uk

CHICHESTER SHIP CANAL TRUSTLinda Wilkinson, 1 Chidham LaneChichester PO18 8TL01243 576701www.chichestercanals.co.uk

COTSWOLD CANALS TRUSTNeil Ritchie, The Chapel HouseSandford Rd, ChurchdownGloucestershire GL3 2HD01452 854057email: [email protected]/

DERBY & SANDIACRE CANALSOCIETYDoug Flack23 Thoresby Crescent, DraycottDerby DE72 3PH01332 874239www.derbycanal.org.uk

DIG DEEP INITIATIVEAlan Cavender10 Vicarage RoadMaidenhead, Berkshire SL6 7DS01628 629033email: [email protected]

DORSET & SOMERSET CANALSTUDY GROUPDerrick Hunt, 43 Greenland MillsBradford on Avon, Wilts BA15 1BL01225 863066email: [email protected]

DROITWICH CANALS TRUSTVaughan Welch29 Dice PleckNorthfield, Birmingham B31 3XW0121 477 9782email: [email protected]/dct/home.htm

EAST ANGLIAN WATERWAYSASSOCIATIONKevin Baker, 26 Geneva WalkToftwood, DerehamNorfolk NR19 1XT email:[email protected]

EREWASH CANAL P&DAMick Golds73 Sudbury AvenueLarklands, IlkestonDerbys DE7 5EANotts (0115) 9328042

FOXTON INCLINED PLANE TRUSTc/o Mike BeechFoxton Canal MuseumMiddle Lock, Gumley RoadFoxton, Market HarboroughLeicestershire LE16 7RA0116 279 2657email:[email protected]

GRAND WESTERN CANALTRUSTDenis Dodd, Wharf CottageNynehead, WellingtonSomerset TA21 0BU01823 661653

GRANTHAM CANALRESTORATION SOCIETYColin Bryan113 Hoe View RoadCropwell BishopNottingham NG12 3DJ01159 892248www.granthamcanal.com

HEREFS & GLOUCS CTc/o The Wharf House, OverGloucester GL2 8DB01452 332900www.h-g-canal.org.uk

KENT & EAST SUSSEX CANALRESTORATION GROUPc/o IWA3 Norfolk CourtNorfolk RdRickmansforthWD3 1LT0845 226 8589email: [email protected]

LAPAL CANAL TRUST26 Loynells Road,RednalBirmingham B45 9NP01785 713862 / 020 8293 9744www.lapal.org

LICHFIELD & HATHERTONCANALS REST'N TRUSTPhil Sharpe34 Old Eaton Road Rugeley,Staffs WS15 2EZ01889 583330email: [email protected]

NEATH & TENNANT CANALSOCIETYIan Milne16 Gower Road,Sketty,Swansea SA2 9BY01792 547902

NWPGGraham Hawkes27 Lawrence Rd,Tilehurst, ReadingBerks RG30 6BH0118 941 0586email:[email protected]/nwpg2001/nwpg.html

POCKLINGTON C.A.S.Paul WaddingtonChurch House, Main St.Hemingborough, SelbyN. Yorks YO8 7QE01757 638027 (eves)01405 763985 (days)www.pocklington.gov.uk/PCAS

SCARS (SANKEY CANAL)Colin Greenall16 Bleak Hill RoadEccleston, St. HelensMerseyside WA10 4RW01744 731746www.scars.org.uk

SHREWSBURY & NEWPORTCANALS TRUSTSteve Bean4 Arscott, PontesburyShrewsbury SY5 0XP01743 860488email: [email protected]

SHROPSHIRE UNION CSGeoff Munro198, Oldbury RoadRowley Regis, WarleyWest Midlands B65 0NW0121-561 5747www.shropshireunion.co.uk

SLEAFORD NAVIGATION TRUSTSteve Hayes, 10 Chelmer CloN Hykeham Lincs LN8 8TH01522-689460email: [email protected]

SOMERSET COAL CANAL SOCBob Parnell, 34 Wedgewood RoadTwerton, Bath BA2 1NX01225-428055rtjhomepages.users.btopenworld.com/SCC2.html

RIVER STOUR TRUSTDave Rayner, 26 Underhill RdSouth Benfleet Essex SS7 1EP01268 753245

STRATFORD ON AVON CANAL SOCRoger Hancock, 1 Tyler StreetStratford upon Avon CV37 6TY01789 296096email: [email protected]

SURREY & HANTS CANAL SOCPeter Redway, 1 Redway CottagesSt. John's Lye, Woking GU21 1SL01483 721710email: [email protected]/

SUSSEX OUSE RESTORATIONTRUSTHazel Lintott26 Gundreda Road, LewesEast Sussex BN7 1PX01273 475812email: [email protected].

SWANSEA CANAL SOCIETYClive Reed17 Smithfield Road, Pontardawe,Swansea, West Glam. SA8 4LA01792 830782

THAMES & MEDWAY CANALASSOCIATIONJohn Epton, 45 Vinson CloseOrpington Kent, BR6 0EQhomepage.ntlworld.com/john.epton/tmca

WENDOVER ARM TRUSTRoger Leishman, 7 Hall Park,Berkhamsted Herts HP4 2NU01442 874536www.wendoverarmtrust.org.uk

page 16

DirDirDirDirDirectoryectoryectoryectoryectoryPlease help us kPlease help us kPlease help us kPlease help us kPlease help us keeeeeeeeeep the Dirp the Dirp the Dirp the Dirp the Direc-ec-ec-ec-ec-tory up to datory up to datory up to datory up to datory up to date - see below rightte - see below rightte - see below rightte - see below rightte - see below right

WEY & ARUN CTThe GranaryFlitchfold FarmLoxwood, BillingshurstWest Sussex RH14 ORH.01403 752403email:[email protected]

WILTS & BERKS CANAL TRUSTGeorge Eycott36 Grange CourtBoundary RoadNewbury RG14 7PH01635 569449email: [email protected]/

WOODEN CANAL BOATSOCIETY5 Oaken Clough TerraceLimehurstAshton under Lyne OL7 9NY0161-330-2315

IWA IPSWICHColin TurnerCornerwaysElm Lane, CopdockIpswich IP8 3ET01473-730586email:[email protected]/iwa/

WRG: GENERAL ENQUIRIES,CANAL CAMP BOOKINGS ANDDRIVER AUTHORISATIONPO Box 114,RickmansworthHerts WD3 1ZY01923 711114email: [email protected]

WRG NORTH WESTMalcolm Bridge3 Heather BankLittleborough,LancashireOL15 0JQ01706 378582email: [email protected]

WRG NW - ENQUIRIES/PAPERCHASESDavid McCarthyWoodstock14 Crumpsall LaneManchester. M8 5FB0161-740 2179www.wrgnw.org.uk

WRG NA (1)Spencer Collins (see below)

WRG NA (2)Ian Nelson,6 Lahn DriveDroitwich SpaWorcs WR9 8TQ.01905 798 6760973 640611 (mobile)email: [email protected]

WRG BITM & 'NAVVIES' DIARYDavid Wedd7 Ringwood Road, BlackwaterCamberley, Surrey GU17 0EY01252 874437email: [email protected]

LONDON WRGTim Lewis5 Herongate Road, WansteadLondon E12 5EJ07802 518094email: [email protected]

LONDON WRG: ENQUIRIESLesley McFadyen(as per Martin Ludgate below)

WRG EAST MIDLANDSJohn Baylis (see below)

ESSEX WRGDave Dobbin130 Ashingdon RoadRochford, EssexSS4 1RR01702-544096email: [email protected]

IWA/WRG STAMP BANKSteve & Mandy Morley33 Hambleton GroveEmerson valleyMilton Keynes MK4 2JS01908 520090email: [email protected]

CANAL CAMPS MOBILES(A) 07850 422156(B) 07850 422157

'NAVVIES' EDITORMartin Ludgate35 Silvester RdEast DulwichLondon SE22 9PB020 8693 32660777 947 8629 (mobile)email: [email protected]

'WRGWEAR' CLOTHINGHelen GardnerNB 'Sussex'Weaver Shipyard, Saxons LaneNorthwich CW8 1LB07989 425346email: [email protected]

WRG FORESTRY TEAMGraham RobinsonSpringwell, Spark BridgeUlverston Cumbria LA12 7ST01229 861317

or Dave Johnson0161 2787663

WRG BOAT CLUBSadie Dean236 Station Rd, WhittleseyPeterborough PE7 2HA01733 20450507748 186867 (mobile)email [email protected]

WRG DIRECTORS

CHAIRMANMike Palmer3 Finwood RoadRowingtonWarwickshire CV35 7DH01564 785293email: [email protected]

TREASURERRoger Day,5 Merton Road, SloughBerks SL1 1QW

SECRETARYNeil Edwards,c/o IWA, PO Box 114Rickmansworth WD3 1ZYemail: [email protected]

WRG LOGISTICSJen Leigh45 Glebe RoadSheffield S10 1FBemail: [email protected]

WRG PLANTMalcolm Bridge3 Heather BankLittleboroughLancashire OL15 0JQemail: [email protected] 378582

SITES GROUP & PUBLICITYJudith Moore3 Finwood Road, RowingtonWarwickshire CV35 7DH01564 785293email: [email protected]

WRGPRINTJohn & Tess Hawkins4 Links WayCroxley Grn,Rickmansworth WD3 3RQ01923 448559email: [email protected]

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TRANSPORT MANAGERRoger Burchett152 Great Knollys StReading RG1 7HB07973 771196email: [email protected]

IWA CHAIRMANJohn Fletcherc/o IWA, PO Box 114Rickmansworth WD3 1ZYemail:[email protected]

OTHER DIRECTORS

Mick Beattie22 Bridgewater Ave Anchorsholme,Blackpool Lancs FY5 3NA01253 864034

Adrian Fry31 Griffon Close, Elmore LockQuedgeley, Gloucester GL2 4NQ07976 640962email: [email protected]

Spencer CollinsN.B. 'Sunset', c/o Saltford PO,493 Bath Rd SaltfordBristol BR31 3HQ07976 084055email: [email protected]

Chris Davey / Helen Davey6 Partridge Ct, Round Close RdAdderbury, Banbury OX17 3EP01295 812002email: [email protected]

Jonathan Smith, 23 HardingsChalgrove, Oxford OX44 7TJ01865 891 370email: [email protected]

John Baylis, 215 Clipstone Rd West,Forest Town, Mansfield, NottsNG19 0HJ01623 633895

Updating this Directory:please help!

The aim of this Directory is to give up-to-date con-tact details for all parts of WRG, plus all othergroups that are involved in volunteer work on wa-terways. However it can only be as accurate and up-to-date as the information that is supplied to us.

If you spot anything incorrect, please tell us. Also ifyou are involved in a canal society not listed herethat carries out volunteer work, please give us yourwork party organiser’s details. And if your canal so-ciety is currently listed but no longer carries out work-parties please tell us, and we will remove your entryso that you are not troubled by queries from would-be volunteers. A fuller list of canal society con-tacts is available in the IWA's Waterway Socie-ties Guide, available from IWA Head Office and onwww.waterways.org.uk. Thank You.

Canal Camps cost £42 per week unless otherwise stated.Bookings for WRG Canal Camps (those identified by acamp number e.g. 'Camp 0418') should go to WRG CanalCamps, PO Box 114, Rickmansworth WD3 1ZY.Tel: 01923 711114. Email: [email protected]

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DiaryDiaryDiaryDiaryDiaryAug 7/8 wrgBITM Wendover Arm: Continuing work from the BITM Camp.Aug 7/8 wrgNW Lancaster Canal, Northern Reaches: Helping set up the WRG campAug 7-14 Camp 0414 Basingstoke Canal Camp on St Johns Backpumping Scheme. Leader: FredAug 7-14 Camp 0415 Lancaster Canal. Leader: Lou Kellett, cook: Harri ThomsettAug 14-21 Camp 0416 Lichfield & Hatherton Canals. Leaders: Mike Palmer & Becky Parr, cook: JudeAug 14-21 Camp 0417 Lancaster Canal. Leader: Izzy Gascoigne, assistants: Nina Whiteman & TomAug 23-Sep-2 Camp 0418 IWA Festival - Burton-on-Trent: Site Services. Leaders: Dave ‘Moose’ HearndenSep 1 Wed Navvies Press date for issue 207Sep 4/5 SUCS Montgomery Canal: Newhouse Lock Abermule Newtown.Sep 4 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collectionSep 5 Sun WRG Committee & Board Meetings: Hatton Park Village Hall. Note change of date.Sep 4-11 Camp 0419 Wilts & Berks Canal Camp at Melksham.Sep 11/12 KESCRG Wey & Arun Canal: Dig Deep project at Haybarn BridgeSep 11/12 NWPG Wilts & Berks Canal: Dig Deep project.Sep 11/12 London WRG Lichfield Canal: working on the Tamworth Road siteSep 18/19 wrgBITM Lichfield Canal: Accom at Martin Heath Hall.

Work at Tamworth Road could include bricklaying, concreting, excavation,Oct 2/3 KESCRG Wilts & Berks Canal: Dig Deep projectOct 2/3 wrgNW Hereford & Gloucester CanalOct 2/3 London WRG Hereford & Gloucester Canal: joint dig with wrgNW, Marcus’s birthdayOct 2/3 SUCS Montgomery Canal: Newhouse Lock Abermule Newtown.Oct 5 Tue Navvies Issue 207 Assembly: (unconfirmed)Oct 9/10 NWPG Wey & Arun Canal: Dig Deep project at Haybarn BridgeOct 9 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collectionOct 16/17 wrgBITM Chichester Canal: Hedge laying.Oct 16/17 Hollinwood CS Hollinwood Canal: Countryside Centre, Daisy Nook Country Park. 10am to

Clearing trees and vegetation.Oct 23/24 London WRG Wilts & Berks Canal: Dig Deep projectOct 23-31 Camp 0420 Grantham Canal Camp. Leader: Joanne ‘Smudge’ SmithOct 23-31 Camp 0421 Cotswold Canals Camp.Nov 1 Mon Navvies Press date for issue 208Nov 6/7 WRG Bonfire Bash: Grantham Canal. Leaders: Gavin Moor and Adrian Fry. See p8-9Nov 6/7 KESCRG Bonfire Bash: Grantham CanalNov 6/7 wrgNW Bonfire Bash: Grantham CanalNov 6/7 London WRG Bonfire Bash: Grantham CanalNov 6/7 SUCS Montgomery Canal: Newhouse Lock Abermule Newtown.Nov 7 Sun WRG Committee & Board Meetings: at the Bonfire Bash. Note change of date andNov 13/14 NWPG To be arrangedNov 13 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collectionNov 20/21 wrgBITM Grantham Canal: Jungle bashingDec 4/5 KESCRG Wilts & Berks Canal: Christmas Party with London WRG. Dauntsey area withDec 4/5 wrgNW Hollinwood Canal: Scrub bashing (and Christmas meal?)Dec 4/5 London WRG Wilts & Berks Canal: Joint Xmas party dig with KESCRGDec 11/12 wrgBITM Wey & Arun Canal (provisional)Dec 11/12 NWPG To be arrangedDec 18 Sat wrgNW ‘Paper Chase’ waste paper collectionDec 26-Jan 1 Camp 0422 New Year Camp - Wilts & Berks Canal

Please send updates to Diary compiler:Dave Wedd, 7 Ringwood Rd, Blackwater, Camberley, Surrey GU17 0EY.

Tel 01252 874437. e-mail: [email protected].

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Dave Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected]

Towey, assistant: Richard Worthington. [email protected]@wrg.org.uk

Moore [email protected], cook: Harri Thomsett [email protected] Ed Walker, cook: Al Moore [email protected]

Martin Ludgate 020-8693-3266 [email protected] Friend 01948-880723 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179

[email protected] Jones 0845-226-8589 [email protected] Hawkes 0118-941-0586 [email protected] Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected] Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected]

pointing, fencing, landscaping, Tirforing, scaffolding, kangoing, brick cleaning.Eddie Jones 0845-226-8589 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected] Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected] Friend 01948-880723 [email protected] Hawkins 01923-448559 [email protected] Hawkes 0118-941-0586 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179Dave Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected]

5pm both days. Ed Mortimer 0161-303-7635 [email protected]

Tim Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected]@[email protected]

Martin Ludgate 020-8693-3266 [email protected] details and booking form [email protected]

Eddie Jones 0845-226-8589 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected] Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected] Friend 01948-880723 [email protected]

venue.Graham Hawkes 0118-941-0586 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179Dave Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected]

Rachael Banyard. Eddie Jones 0845-226-8589 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179 [email protected] Lewis 07802-518094 [email protected] Wedd 01252-874437 [email protected] Hawkes 0118-941-0586 [email protected] McCarthy 0161-740-2179

[email protected]

DiaryDiaryDiaryDiaryDiaryCanal society rCanal society rCanal society rCanal society rCanal society reeeeegulargulargulargulargularwwwwworororororkkkkking paring paring paring paring partiestiestiestiesties

Regular monthly or weekly working parties:3rd Sunday of month BCNS Jeff Barley 01543-3732842nd Sunday & following Wed. BCS Cosgrove Athina Beckett 01908-661217Anytime inc. weekdays BCT Aqueduct section Gerald Fry 01288-353273Every Sunday ChCT Various sites Mick Hodgetts 01246-620695Mon & Wed mornings CCT Cotswolds Dudley Greenslade 01453 825515Every weekend (Sat OR Sun) CCT Cotswolds Neil Ritchie 01452-8540571st Sunday of month CCT Cotswolds: summit Mark Welton 01453-872405Wednesday evenings CCT Cotswolds: East end Keith Harding 01451-860181Every Saturday DCT Droitwich Canal Jon Axe 0121-608 0296Last Sunday of month EAWA N Walsham & Dilham Kevin Baker 01362-6998554th Sunday of month ECPDA Langley Mill Michael Golds 0115-932-8042Second Sun of month FIPT Foxton Inclined PlaneMike Beech 0116-279-26571st & 3rd Sundays GCRS Grantham Canal Colin Bryan 0115-989-22482nd Sat of month GWCT Nynehead Lift Denis Dodd 01823-661653Saturdays H&GCT Hereford (Aylestone) Brian Fox 01432-358628Saturdays / Sundays H&GCT OverWharf House Maggie Jones 01452-618010Various H&GCT Hereford (Aylestone) Adrian Fry 07976-640962Every Sunday if required IWPS Bugsworth Basin Ian Edgar 01663-7324931st Saturday & 3rd Wed. IWA Ipswich Stowmarket Navigtn. Colin Turner 01473-7305862nd weekend of month K&ACT John Rolls 01189-6663161st Sunday of month LHCRT Lichfield Peter Matthews 01543-3189333rd Sunday of month LHCRT Hatherton Denis Cooper 01543-3743702nd & last Sundays PCAS Paul Waddington 01757-6380272nd Sunday of month SCARS Sankey Canal Colin Greenall 01744-7317461st Sunday of month SCCS Combe Hay Locks Bob Parnell 01225-428055Most weekends SHCS Basingstoke Peter Redway 01483-7217101st Sunday of month SNT Haverholme Lock Dave Pullen 01673-8622781st weekend of month SUCS Newhouse Lock Mike Friend 01948-8807233rd Sunday of month TMCA David Rouse 01474-362861Approx 15th of month WACT Mid-Week group Colin Gibbs 020-82417736Every Sunday & Thursday WACT Devils Hole Lock Eric Walker 023-9246-3025Thursdays fortnightly WACT Maintenance Unit Peter Wilding 01483-422519or for general information on Wey & Arun contact their office on 01403-7524031st weekend of month WAT Little Tring Roger Leishman 01442-874536Every weekend WBCT Wilts & Berks Canal Peter Smith 01793-852883Every Sunday W&BCC Dauntsey / Foxham Rachael Banyard 01249-892289Please send any amendments, additions and deletions to Dave Wedd (address on previous page)

Abbreviations used in DiaryBCNS Birmingham Canal Navigations Soc.BCS Buckingham Canal SocietyBCT Bude Canal TrustChCT Chesterfield Canal TrustCCT Cotswolds Canals TrustDCT Droitwich Canals TrustEAWA East Anglian Waterways AssociationECPDA Erewash Canal Pres. & Devt. Assoc.FIPT Foxton Inclined Plane TrustD&SCS Derby & Sandiacre Canal SocietyGCRS Grantham Canal Restoration SocietyGWCT Grand Western Canal TrustH&GCT Hereford & Gloucester Canal TrustIWPS Inland Waterways Protection Society

K&ACT Kennet & Avon Canal TrustKESCRG Kent & E Sussex Canal Rest. GroupLHCRT Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Rest'n TrustNWPG Newbury Working Party GroupPCAS Pocklington Canal Amenity SocietySCARS Sankey Canal Restoration SocietySCCS Somersetshire Coal Canal SocietySHCS Surrey & Hants Canal SocietySNT Sleaford Navigation TrustSUCS Shropshire Union Canal SocietyTMCA Thames & Medway Canal AssociationWBCT Wilts & Berks Canal TrustW&BCC Wilts & Berks Canal CompanyWACT Wey & Arun Canal TrustWAT Wendover Arm Trust

Mobile groups' social evenings(please phone to confirm before turning up)

London WRG: 7:30pm on Tues 11 days beforeeach dig. Usually at 'Star Tavern', BelgraveMews West, London. Tim Lewis 07802-518094or e-mail [email protected].

NWPG: 9:00pm on 3rd Tue of month at the'Hope Tap', West end of Friar St. Reading.Graham Hawkes 0118 941 0586

LetterLetterLetterLetterLettersssss...on w...on w...on w...on w...on waaaaaterwterwterwterwterwaaaaayyyyys in Ks in Ks in Ks in Ks in Kent and Eastent and Eastent and Eastent and Eastent and EastSusseSusseSusseSusseSussexxxxx

Dear Martin

I refer to the letter from Brian Andrews, publishedin Navvies 205. I believe Brian was a member ofthe Kent and East Sussex Branch of IWA(IWAKES) very many years ago. His commentsregarding the Dartford & Crayford Navigation andthe River Rother probably date from his time ofmembership.

IWAKES is active in its monitoring of all the wa-terways in its area. Indeed we have appointed representatives for each of the waterways, includingthose mentioned in Brian’s letter.

Of course we would like to see the lock at Dartford fully restored to working order, and we have hadpreliminary discussions with the Local Authority. But until negotiations have been concluded, thereare no moorings above the lock. I confirm that the Navigation is available from the Thames up to thelock (shallow draft craft can cross the concrete sill to go upstream at high tides), and our case forrestoration of the lock would be strengthened by more use of the available waterway.

The River Rother is currently navigable from the sea to Bodiam. The May 2001 IWA National TrailboatRally was organised by one of our Branch Members for this stretch of River but had to be cancelleddue to the Foot & Mouth epidemic. Dredging was carried out last year under EA’s flood defencebudget, there being no designated navigation authority. A trip boat is available should readers wish tosee the river for themselves.

The Kentish Stour is navigable from the sea to Grove Ferry, which is just short of the former effectivehead of navigation at Fordwich. There is no plan to restore that section or the length into Canterbury,which retains a right of navigation. IWAKES is focussing on stopping sewerage discharges that arepromoting abnormal plant growth leading to siltation.

The Cuckmere is blocked by a gravel bar at its mouth. IWAKES recently replied to a consultation byEA proposing to greatly increase the tidal flow, perhaps leading to re-establishment of a channel.

Just last month, we met with Local Authority officers to discuss the conservation of the only lockactually constructed for the proposed Penshurst Navigation, which was abandoned before comple-tion.

Whilst we would like to see all the waterways in Kent and East Sussex in beneficial use, we must berealistic about what is both practical and desirable.

The Royal Military Canal was not designed for pleasure boating and its adaptation to that purpose isboth impractical and would serve little purpose. Our policy is to ensure that it is accessible to walkersover its whole length and to ensure those parts that are navigable remain so.

The Branch has two restoration priorities, both of which are progressing through restoration bodies:the Thames and Medway Canal and the Sussex Ouse. In particular, in partnership with GraveshamBorough Council, South East England Development Agency and Sustrans, we have commissioned abenefits study for the restoration of the Thames and Medway Canal. The Consultants report is due inJuly. It is this waterway that needs priority support. IWAKES is raising funding for the project, andindeed I ran the London Marathon to raise sponsorship. Readers who would like to contribute to ourefforts should forward their donation (payable to “IWA”) via Navvies.

Finally, I would ask that before any enthusiastic reader decides to wade in to any of these waterways,they first contact the IWAKES Secretary, Roy Sutton, or me.

David HodgkinsonIWAKES Chairman

If any Navvies readers want to get involved in supporting waterway restoration in Kent or East Sus-sex, I will happily put them in touch with David Hodgkinson or Roy Sutton. ....Ed

LetterLetterLetterLetterLettersssssWho nicWho nicWho nicWho nicWho nickkkkked all theed all theed all theed all theed all theaaaaapostrpostrpostrpostrpostrophes?ophes?ophes?ophes?ophes?

Dear Martin,

I was shocked to discover that someone had sto-len all the apostrophes and inverted commas frommy last issue of Navvies. I checked inside theenvelope in case they had just fallen off in thepost, but to no avail. Was it just my copy or didthe thief manage to de-punctuate the whole printrun? Personally, I suspect those dodgy people atwrgprint ... or maybe one of the workers at theNavvies stuffing session?

On a technical note, it seems that the inverted commas in Times New Roman on the back page wereuntouched - is that because they’re harder to get off? Or maybe the blaggards decided to leave all theones on the cover so that the theft wouldn’t be noticed until someone actually opened the magazineand looked inside?

Anyway, now that the Right Tool For The Job appeal is coming to a close, I think we should launch theApostrophe Appeal. For a start, you could recycle some from old issues of Navvies - I’m prepared tosend you some of mine. No doubt Mr Mac will ship you a skipful from the next paperchase. Andmaybe you could collect all those superfluous apostrophes that are to be found on signs all over theplace?

Anyway, to start you off, here’s my contribution of a few I found lying around ‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’. Perhapsif others could do the same we’ll get you up and running again before the next issue - a tall order, Iknow, but what the hell - we all have to make big sacrifices for the greater good.

Edd Leetham

PS. I thought “Just John’s” (please don’t lose those quotation marks) Camp report in Navvies 205was brilliant and should be held up as beacon for others to aim for - just the right balance of humourand information. Just one question - which canal was the camp held on and what was the unfortunatevillage with the dead pub called?

Firstly, my apologies for the general shortage of apostrophes in the last issue. This was not caused bytheft, but by a change to the way in which the magazine is prepared for printing. As our previousplatemakers went bankrupt while waiting for the artwork for issue 205 to arrive (You think I’m joking?)we have switched to a different company - who I am pleased to say did an excellent job on the picturesin the last issue. This company is a little bit more up-to-date, and part of this more-up-to-date-ness isthat the entire issue gets sent to them on CD-ROM, rather than arriving as printed pages with just thepics on disc, as previously. Apart from a couple of slight glitches (did anyone spot that the ‘surveyor’slevel’ showing the Appeal total in the last issue didn’t actually show the total?) the only problem withthis new arrangement seems to be that all the apostrophes and inverted commas disappeared. Well,not quite all: it only affected those in Ariel font, and only the ones that were asymmetric ‘printersquotes’ rather than symmetrical ‘typewriter quotes’ - and it didn’t affect any that were in italic and/orbold. Hopefully we should get it sorted in this issue.

Secondly, the camp that ‘Just John’ reported on in issue 205 was held on the Thames, Berks &Andover Canal, and the pub was the Floundering Arms in Sodding Chipbury. Or to put it another way,I’m afraid we’d better come clean and admit that the entire camp report was a fabrication based onthe sort of things that do generally seem to happen on most camps (or at least in most camp reports!)and that the author was none other than Mr George ‘Bungle’ Eycott. However, Edd is quite right thatit contained the perfect mix of humour and information, and if it serves as an inspiration for those ofyou who are at this very moment writing reports on the rest of this summer’s camps, then it will nothave been a complete waste of a page. Alternatively, if you don’t send me camp reports from the restof this summer’s camps, I’ll simply get Bungle to write them all - whether or not he was there! ...Ed

Dear Martin

I’m sure that everyone that has been involved in all aspects of Little Venice and come into contact withthe site services team run by Eddie Jones will agree that he has done an excellent job over the(many!) years. Despite the many rules and regulations changes both with Health and Safety and thelocal council, and the seemingly more and more complex task each year of fitting in all the boats,traders, electric supplies, accommodation, car parks, scaffold bridges, pontoon bridges, new bridgesthat you can’t get trolleys around... as well as the complicated logistics of it all, he somehow managedto come through each year only slightly battered and bruised!

LetterLetterLetterLetterLettersssss...and a possib...and a possib...and a possib...and a possib...and a possible ele ele ele ele explanaxplanaxplanaxplanaxplanationtiontiontiontionfffffor the wide locor the wide locor the wide locor the wide locor the wide lock ak ak ak ak at 14 Loct 14 Loct 14 Loct 14 Loct 14 Lockkkkksssss

I am looking forward to touring the country againhelping with the KESCRG stand and can say thatI have now forgiven him for dragging me in to helpdo all the ‘people stuff’ at Little Venice from theage of about 19 (oh my god, that was a long timeago!!); it must have been all the beer....

xx ‘Girl Viv’from the other side of the world

PS unfortunately won’t be back for the National as Ihad hoped, but should make it for the Christmas camps!

Dear Martin

In perfection, of course, I should have written this letter for inclusion in Navvies 205 but as I don’t wantto hog every issue (is this a new excuse?) I’ve waited till now (one day after the press date of 1st July- well, I’ve been so busy!) to put pen to paper and say a sincere THANK YOU to all the many peoplewho sent me good wishes for my birthday.

Particular thanks go to Maureen Barton (the Yorkshire Tyke who has infiltrated WRG NorthWest) whomade the wonderful camper van cake, perfect in every detail (Maureen told me that it took a fortnightto make) and to that young (?) co-founder of NorthWest Chris Griffiths for his wonderful photos, notforgetting the team who did the ‘do’. It was a wonderfully happy occasion and I’m trying to think of thenext - perhaps the 35th anniversary (which falls in September) of my first attempt at digging in acanal, when I did actually do something positive in the locks at Marple. As has been noticed, I’veavoided these spade things ever since!

YoursMr Mac

Fourteen Locks Conundrum: A few issues ago, we included the above picture of the strange Lock 11at Fourteen Locks on the Mon & Brec, whose chamber widens out on both sides in the form of two‘shelves’ (of slightly different heights), for reasons unknown. Roy Sutton has sent in a possible explana-tion: that they were built so that boats could pass in the flight, and therefore save both water (Roy’sdiagrams demonstrating this are available by email on request to the editor) and time. This being the onlyset of three locks in the flight (most of the rest are pairs) they would otherwise have formed a bottleneck(due to taking longer to operate than a pair) and wasted water (a staircase of three uses more than astaircase of two). I have my doubts about the water-saving theory: as I understand it, Fourteen Locks arenot ‘true’ staircase locks at all (although I suppose they might originally have been) - they are all separatesingle locks with very short pounds between them, connected by culverts to small reservoir ponds along-side. So they don’t suffer from the water-wasting problems of staircase locks, and a three-lock set will useno more than a pair. However, the time-saving idea is a good one: ability to pass, if it can be done quickly,reduces the time taken for one boat to go up the three and one to come down by one-sixth. The fact thatone ‘shelf’ is higher than the other perhaps reflects the fact that most boats going uphill would be un-loaded and need less depth. And the stonework of the ‘shelves’ looks newer than the rest, so maybe theywere built at a time when the canal was getting busy and struggling to cope with the traffic. I’m inclined tobelieve this explanation - unless somebody comes up with a flaw in it... or a better idea! ...Ed

Mar

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Camp report: Saul Canal Festival 2004

Day -4 (Saturday)

Nick, Cath, Holly and James arrived, completewith borrowed caravan. They then realised thatthe drawback with caravan holidays was havingto stay in a caravan! Bungle arrived with anothercaravan and evicted the mouse nest (having al-ready evicted the bees when he picked it up). Hollythen helpfully ate the filter to Bungle’s vac so thathe couldn’t clear up after the mouse’s nest.

For the first time at the Saul camp we were stay-ing on site in a marquee with a kitchen hut soBungle daisy-chained a few bits ofcable together to get the kitchenworking. Martin arrived with an NJFfull of cables and other assortedstuff from the North West container.

Day -3 (Sunday)

The main reason for arriving soearly was to bury a cable acrossthe site, so Bungle started to buryit. What looked like a grassy sur-face turned out to have rocks andtarmac underneath so it was ratherharder going than expected. Bun-gle gave up and went to collectSammy from Newbury, in themeantime the trench fairy (or Nickas he is otherwise known) finishedoff the trench.

Day -2 (Monday)

Nick had gone back to work andCath (and James!) went home toRoss, so Bungle was left to run outsome cables and fill in the trench.The he started on the plumbing.The plumbing at Saul before nowhad been fairly basic (two taps inthe campsite field), but this yearthere were two blocks of showers,a kitchen, three taps in the camp-site field and hot/cold running wa-ter in the bar.

Luckily the plumbing supplies were merely 10minutes from site - several journeys were madeduring the day. Also, Dave Howarth arrived on siteand helped with the pipework jobs which washandy. By the end of the day the WRG accommo-dation had hot and cold running water (exceptwhen the sun came out, when we had hot andhot running water). In the evening Jen arrived withthe kit and VOJ via a somewhat less than directroute... On the plus side she did get to see quite alot of the canal!

Day -1 (Tuesday)

Nick, Cath and James returned to site. The plumb-ing team began work in earnest. Just to provethat Saul has become a “proper” festival, severallorry loads of fencing arrived (including some tobe used as a night fence!). Lots of cables wererun out and we finished building the lighting tower.

Day 0 (Wednesday)

The camp began, the WRG volunteers arrived,Lauren turned out to be a professional washerupper, so Cath kept her washing up all afternoon!

Camp rCamp rCamp rCamp rCamp reeeeeporporporporporttttt...fr...fr...fr...fr...from the Cotsom the Cotsom the Cotsom the Cotsom the Cotswwwwwold Canalold Canalold Canalold Canalold CanalTTTTTrrrrrustustustustust’’’’’s Saul Canal Fs Saul Canal Fs Saul Canal Fs Saul Canal Fs Saul Canal Festivestivestivestivestivalalalalal

‘His name was Bungle and he drove the fastest milk-cart in the West...’George bodges-up the water supply for the campsite showers.

Mar

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The catering kit was unpacked (except for the stuffin the coolbox which threatened to walk out of thetrailer and unpack itself). Whilst all this was goingon Roger set off to St. Helens with VOJ to pick upa couple of all terrain golf carts (we were not al-lowed to call them Bradshaws). The plan was toput one in VOJ and one on a trailer behind, butinstead he arrived back with a “jolly large” trailerwith both buggies secured onto it! Bungle decidedthat the buggies needed a trial so he set off withClive in the passenger seat (purely to check thecarrying capacity you understand), about ten min-utes later he returned - Bungle had a big grin onhis face, however Clive appeared slightly pale....

During the day the bar was built: new for Saulwas the beer chiller system. No wet hessian, nostrings of cooling pipes, but a polystyrene boxaround the entire rack of barrels then an indus-trial air conditioning system running inside it! Itwas certainly effective....

Day 1 (Thursday)

All the Heras fencing was finished off and tradersstarted to arrive - yes seriously! Clive pulled animpressive stunt and to the surprise of everyonea huge milk tanker full of water arrived to run thecampsite showers. Bungle set about connectingit up and discovered that food grade tankers usea connection different to anything else on theplanet. A conversation with the dairy ensued:

Transport manager: “You won’t be able to buyanything to connect to that”Bungle: “Do you have anything lying about that wecould use?”Transport manager: “Hmm, possibly. What areyour bodging skills like?”

Suffice it to say two hours later an engineeringsolution was devised using blanking plates, plas-tic fittings and a couple of miles of PTFE tape!Amazingly NO cable ties were used in the sys-tem....

Day 2 (Friday)

The day before the festival. Power was laid on toall the traders that had asked for it, then powerwas laid onto all the traders that had forgotten toask... All the traders arrived and set up their stalls,at which point the wind got up and blew some ofthem down. We were wondering whether it wouldbe “Posh Coffee” or “Cats’ Protection League” thatwould end up in Gloucester first! In the eveningwe had “The Rolling Clones” in the Ents tent; theirperformance certainly tested the load-rating onthe stage... They also had some dancers calledthe Clonettes who attracted significant attentionfrom some members of the site crew.

Day 3 (Saturday)

The festival happened. In the afternoon astocktake revealed what everyone expected - thebar was going to run out of beer - so Bungle wentoff on a mercy mission to get some. In the eveninga band called “The Blue Horses” took centre stage.Towards the end of the act they played “Smoke onthe water” which turned out to be rather appropri-ate. Many of you will by now have heard about eventson the Saturday night so I won’t go into great de-tails here, suffice to say one boat burnt out com-pletely and another elderly wooden boat some dis-tance away sank (possibly helped by the hugewash from the fire boat). Most people got back tobed around 3am; however Nick carried on ferry-ing fire equipment up and down the towpath onthe buggy and finally went to bed at 9am....

Day 4 (Sunday)

Most people emerged bleary-eyed. Some from over-indulgence the night before, some from lack of sleepfrom the previous night’s events. However the festi-val took no account of this and carried on anyway.

Day 5 (Monday)

Whilst we were having breakfast the marqueecompany arrived to take down the accommoda-tion, which was a surprise as we were still livingin it! We suggested that they start with anothertent and got back to eating seconds (or possiblythirds!) of eggy bread. After breakfast the site dis-appeared! Considering the time and effort to putit all together, it got packed away remarkablyquickly. Roger ferried the trailer-mounted genera-tor back to the Eastington compound only to dis-cover it was locked to the van and needed thekey from Bungles pocket to unlock it. Apparentlyhe suggested Bungle should be subjected to anunpleasant procedure involving a pineapple...

Day 6 (Tuesday)

The WRG camp packed up and went home - allexcept Roger and Bungle who stayed ready toleave the following morning, Roger to return thebuggies to St. Helens and Bungle via a long andconvoluted route to return kit and the caravan.

Thanks to: Cath for cooking, Holly for keeping ussafe from Ben, Ben for keeping us safe from Holly,James for providing entertainment, the camp crew(Lauren, Maggie, Derek, Alan & Earnie) for doingstuff, Malcolm & Roger for turning up and doingmore stuff and finally the Saul Junction Festivalcommittee for giving us all something to do andbeing all round good folks! Here’s to next year....

George ‘Bungle’ Eycott

KESCRKESCRKESCRKESCRKESCRGGGGGEddie rEddie rEddie rEddie rEddie reeeeeporporporporports frts frts frts frts from the Grom the Grom the Grom the Grom the GrandandandandandUnion WUnion WUnion WUnion WUnion Wendoendoendoendoendovvvvver Arm...er Arm...er Arm...er Arm...er Arm...

KESCRG on the Wendover Arm, July 2004

KESCRG last visited the Wendover Arm in April2003 when we spent the weekend working on thebase of the off side retaining wall halfway betweenLittle Tring Bridge and the winding hole.

We returned to the project in July 2004 and it wasvery satisfying (and a great deal of respect to theWendover Arm Trust) to see the walls now com-plete and the channel profiled ready for lining.

Here we are vibrating the ready mix concrete forthe base of the retaining wall in 2003:

...and here’s the same section in July 2004 exca-vated to the correct profile and tracked over withan excavator to ram the soil down...

Our main job for the weekend was to prepare theBentomat lining ready for the Wendover Arm Trustcamp in a months time.

The Bentomat is supplied in 40m lengths weigh-ing around 1250Kg a roll which we had to cut intomore manageable lengths, varying from 5.5 to8.5m depending on where they were destined forin the channel.

Sounds easy in theory but back breaking in prac-tice!

The main roll is laid out, measured and cut...

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It is then rolled back, tied and then lifted onto thepile ready for the next one.

We cut over 50 lengths in the weekend wreckingour way through many many Stanley blades.

Elsewhere the excavation of the channel carriedon in preparation for the Bentomat we were cut-ting...

The trust had hired some new 6 tom dumper...

...and yes that really is the well known little chapHarry sat on top of the thing!

Hopefully when we return next year to help withthe start of phase two there will be boats turn-ing where this dumper is situated in the wind-ing hole:

All in all a very rewarding weekend for which Imust give thanks to the WAT for their fantasticorganisation as ever.

For a full report please take look at the KESCRGweb site www.kescrg.org.uk and follow the linkfrom the pictures page.

Cheers

Eddie JonesKESCRG weekend working party organiser

KESCRKESCRKESCRKESCRKESCRGGGGG...while Ian tells us a...while Ian tells us a...while Ian tells us a...while Ian tells us a...while Ian tells us about thebout thebout thebout thebout thegggggrrrrroup’oup’oup’oup’oup’s plans fs plans fs plans fs plans fs plans for the neor the neor the neor the neor the next yxt yxt yxt yxt yearearearearear

KESCRG News

Hi all, Ian here - KESCRG’s new vice chairmanno less!! Now how did I manage to get that job aswell? Aahh yes, volunteered by my loving wife noless!!

Anyway, less about me; more about the group...At our last dig on the Wendover we allocated someSaturday night drinking time to having an AGM.The intention was to keep it nice and short so wecould get to the nice local canalside pub. Unfortu-nately this was not to be, as it was gone 10pmwhen we finished, so we had to go to the nearestpub instead!

Ken gave a quick summary of what has been avery successful 15 months since the last AGM.We have invested in some new tools with hugefinancial help from our friends in the Kent & EastSussex Branch of IWA, which is much appreci-ated. We can safely say the tool trailer looksas good now as when we purchased it andgave it its first outing to Milton Keynes Na-tional Festival. We are very pleased to notethe help of Eddie Evans in a complete re-furbishment of the open trailer originally builtby Ron Martin many years ago. All it nowneeds is the skills of one Neil Ritchie to com-plete the refurbishment task.

We are in the process of fixing our datesfor 2005 and would welcome any ideas forsites. We also plan to get the KESCRGpublicity and sales stand out and about. Wewill definitely be at the 2004 National atBurton on Trent, next door to AppealingFood. In 2005 we aim to be at the Wendoverand Saul rallies as a minimum. We reallydo need some help manning the stand,please contact me if you can help even ifonly for a few hours.

We now have a wonderful new, fresh andinformative website built and managed byJenni please go to kescrg.org.uk to see.Hopefully it will be popping up on a searchengine or two very soon. We also now havea new contact number for information 08454228589, dial this for details for the next dig!

Our finances are on a good footing right now, butas ever we need ensure it stays that way as weneed around £2000 per year to keep functioningeffectively. As part of our review we may well takethe plunge and become a registered charity, whichwill give us better access to match funding andother income sources. We have also reviewedtogether the costs of the weekends and have de-cided after much discussion that from Septem-ber a KESCRG weekend will cost £10. This willgive the catering team much more flexibility forthe menus and ensure we continue to be some ofthe best fed Navvies on the circuit! We will how-ever have a discount available to ensure accessfor everyone.

KESCRG dig one weekend per month, and do aone week camp each year. We love to have newvolunteers along and have extensive skillsthroughout the team that we are always willing toshare. Whether you have been sat at home won-dering what to do or have been on summer campsand would like to do more throughout the yearwe’d love to see you. Generally you’ll find us dig-ging in the ‘southern’ half of the country. Lots moredetails on the website or spot our green T-shirtsat WRG events!

KESCRG: the green ones amongst the redarmy - often copied, never beaten!

Ian Williamson

BITM running their restoration tombola game at Wendover

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BITMBITMBITMBITMBITM...and Stella r...and Stella r...and Stella r...and Stella r...and Stella reeeeeporporporporports frts frts frts frts from theom theom theom theom theBit in the MiddleBit in the MiddleBit in the MiddleBit in the MiddleBit in the Middle

News from wrgBITM

Graham Hotham reported (Navvies 204) on thework achieved and social life enjoyed during the2003 BITM Camp on the Wilts & Berks, but youmight be forgiven for wondering (unless you scru-tinise the Diary pages carefully) whether BITM isstill an active group. Well, yes, we are indeed, asthis brief survey will confirm.

In August, Sue Burchett led a weekend of initiallock clearance work at Pewsham on the Wilts &Berks. Three new volunteers joined us. Lots ofvegetation and soil was cleared to reveal the lockchamber and its adjacent dry-dock. Dave Callanput his civil engineering skills to good use withMike and Steve Paice constructing formworkready for the arch of the ground-paddle chamberto be rebuilt during the WRG Camp a week or solater. Ros & Bob Featherstone enjoyed them-selves so much they now come out regularly withus.

The following month we headed North (well,North-ish) for a change and spent an enjoyableweekend at Cropwell on the Grantham Canal.Being a BW-owned site, rules were extremelystringent. We were not, for instance, allowed tobring in any mechanical plant which might leaknasty hydraulic oil everywhere and pollute the wa-tercourse. Some of the stumps had enormousboles and took half-a-morning’s work with sev-eral people, one or more tirfors and a mattock ortwo to extract. Indeed, the effort was too muchfor one of our tirfors, whose case split neatly intwo. As a result, once the immediate brushwoodhad been removed, progress was comparativelyslow. Because the ground was so dry, however,and we were lightingbonfires to get rid ofthe brushwood andundergrowth, a largebowser of water hadbeen brought to anadjacent field to dealwith any emergency,and a chain of fire-buckets set ready onthe towpath adjacentto the bonfire. Katy-the-labrador care-fully sampled each,but didn’t tel l uswhich tasted the best.The only other pur-pose to which theywere put was to cooldown the fire-tender-in-chief, for whosetask for the day wasa little warm.

In October, we were once again guests of theStone House Gang youth club, whose club housebacks onto the Lapal canal, so without exceptionwe all walked to site. The council had changedtheir minds about allowing us to fell trees alongthe line of the canal between Somery Road andBottetourt Road, so we had to have a change ofplans on Saturday morning. Ian Rutledge(Chainsaw Ian) did tidy up one tree in a council-lor’s garden, while the rest of us went back overthe site of our previous visit in March 2003 anddid a more thorough clearance. The path wasclosed to the public so only BITM and local Trustmembers were on site. The tirfor gangs were busyagain, winching out the remaining stumps. Tomake all neat and tidy we also piled the litter (lessthan last year but still quite a considerable amount)into heaps ready for the Council to collect on theMonday (which we later heard they duly did), andthen cut the grass with strimmers and a couple ofground-clearing machines (imagine a brush-cut-ters on pram-wheels). A few of us spent an houror so in Selly Oak Park clearing litter (and theoccasional sycamore sapling) from the canal linethere and transplanting any seedling oaks wecould find from the bed of the canal to the parkside of the towpath.

BITM on the Wendover Arm: removing stumps from the Little Tring-Aston Clinton

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November saw us on the Wendover Arm, clear-ing more of the dense blackthorn scrub which filledthe erstwhile canal bed between Whitehouses andDrayton Beauchamp.

We had an excellent turnout for the Decemberdig on the Chichester Canal, lured by the pros-pect of June Paice’s Christmas Dinner on theSaturday evening. Indeed, the response was sogreat that Rachael (Site Leader for the weekend)had to ask the local organiser to look for alterna-tive accommodation as the scout hut originallybooked was not going to be sufficiently roomy. Inthe event we only had about 23 people on site asseveral people had to drop out at short notice.For those of us who arrived early, the weekendbegan festively with carol singing, mulled wine,hot-dogs and the switching on of the Christmaslights at the canal basin on the Friday evening.

Our task for the weekend was hedgelaying alongsidethe towpath, and as this was still open to members ofthe public we couldn’t have bonfires so all the hedgetrimmings were heaped onto a workboat and takenaway by water. Graham Hotham thoroughly enjoyedrenewing his acquaintance with Bantam tug controlsand the Chichester Ship Canal Trust’s trip boat chuggedup and down all day on Santa trips. At some point onSaturday morning I asked someone where to find anew supply of stakes for the hedge and was told “roundthe corner, over the bridge, and collect them from San-ta’s hut”. And there they were!

The only thing to mar the weekend was that itrained most of the day on Saturday, and wetrooped back to the hall like drowned rats.

At least we didn’t have the problem that 20 youngarmy officers coppicing the hedge a bit further upthe canal experienced. Rachael reported that 5of them turned up with the wrong footwear, andthe officer in charge made them finish the daywith 20 press-ups, followed with having to crawlthrough the mud and puddles on their hands andknees!

Under Di and Rachael’s expert tuition, we laid 166yards of hitherto very neglected hedge (whichRachael kindly said was a difficult hedge thatwas certainly not ideal for beginners) to whatRachael later described as “a very satisfactorystandard”. The Duke of Richmond, who hadcome up to make a presentation, was appar-ently very impressed, as were various membersof the local Canal Society who have invited usback again this year.

On top of that, June and her helpers put on anamazing spread that was enjoyed by all. Mike andJune had got up at 4 am on Friday morning to goto Smithfield Market for our three different meats,and from our point of view, it was well worth it!Especial thanks to them both, as well as to theSite Leaders, for making the weekend so success-ful.

BITM don’t just do digging - several of them attended the small boat rally at Lordings Flood Lock tomark the completion of the restoration of the water wheel.

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The New Year (well, the third weekend in January,to be precise) saw us on what seems to have be-come an annual visit to do more scrub bashing andTirforing on the Buckingham Arm of the Grand Un-ion. In February the group were working at DoubleBridge somewhere near Pewsham on the Wilts andBerks, again dropping invasive trees and tirforingout stumps as well as the usual scrub clearance.Then in March our projected trip to the Cromfordfell through at short notice and Roger Leishman of-fered us work on the Wendover Arm again. Unlikethe Grantham, we had the assistance of an exca-vator and dumper so large stumps did not stand achance. The line of the canal from the new windinghole at Little Tring (which BITM will be helping toline with Bentomat and ready-mix in August) rightthrough to the new section built by the contractorsas part of the A41 Aston Clinton bypass is now clearof scrub and stumps and ready to be relined andre-watered as soon as funding and volunteer timepermit (once Phase 1 is complete, of course).

April (on the Wey & Arun) was a tricky weekend tolead, so naturally events dictated that it fell by de-fault to a first-time leader! Dave James may nothave known quite what he was in for when he agreedto stand in as Site Leader instead of GrahamHotham. Graham Baird’s list of work for us included:continuing towpath resurfacing (in Sidney Wood):raising the swing bridge onto timbers using bottlejacks, ready for grit blasting and cleaning the steel-work with a needle gun (at the Old Wharf,Newbridge): clearing an area for the new site com-pound and erecting post & rail fencing on the westbank of the canal for the footpath diversion, andremoving tree stumps from around the existing fixedbridge (at Haybarn). When he heard how manyvolunteers we had that weekend, the local WPOalso arranged for a fourth site on the Saturday work-ing with Winston Harwood (I think this was at OrfoldAqueduct, but I may be wrong!). Add the logisticsof ensuring everyone had the correct numbers ofworkers, the right equipment and (most important)lunch, and life becomes somewhat complicated. Onthe Sunday things were simplified a little: we onlyhad three sites, and everyone was instructed tomake (and take with them) their own sandwiches! Iwas fortunately delegated to work at Sidney Wood,and spent a happy weekend driving a dumperthrough the wood (especially beautiful in Spring) todeliver road planings to the towpath-resurfacers. Wehad a surprise on Sunday morning when doing theusual checks on the plant: there on top of bothdumper cylinder heads were woven beginnings ofbirds’ nests! Saturday (in Sidney Wood, at any rate)was a great day – sunshine, spring flowers, birdsong,beautiful scenery (only marred for the local dog-walkers by two noisy smelly bright-yellow 4x4s whichfor some unaccountable reason had invaded theirnormally peaceful territory) and a task which wasself-evident and which progressed satisfactorily.

On Sunday, however, it rained. Hard. Our teamwere fortunate in having a container in which toshelter for a prolonged lunch break, but when weresumed work the route had become pretty wa-terlogged and we didn’t get as far with the resur-facing as we’d hoped because we had to go backand repair the path that had already been laid.Getting the vibrating roller back was interestingas the directions from the canal to the point fromwhich the plant was due to be collected via alonger but flatter and drier route than the directone by which we had brought it down were not asclear as they might have been. We ended up withthe roller at the foot of a very muddy slope, withthe return route back almost as problematic, sothe landrover and stout strops were used to as-sist the roller up the slope.

May is our month for festivals and fundraising:Little Venice (where Graham was particularlythankful for the new party tent which replaced ourtwo leaky gazebos this year as he sat in the drywatching a river running through the stand andthe antics of ill-shod members of the public andexuberant small boys outside on an increasinglymuddy slope), Rickmansworth (where the Site serv-ices team earned a £20 bonus to add to the salesstand’s takings by returning abandoned beerglasses to the beer tent and collecting the 50pdeposit on each) and Wendover where both thesales stand and the Canal Restoration Game werereasonably successful but the luckiest membersof the team bunked off to operate bendy-toys onsite! BITM’s Flights of Fancy quiz (crossword-styleclues to the names of lock flights around the UK)was launched at the Wendover festival, and if youhaven’t had a go at this yet it is not too late to sendoff for a copy. Just send a donation (suggestedminimum 50p) of unused postage stamps or acheque payable to “IWA Waterway Recovery GroupBITM Branch”, along with a stamped self-addressedenvelope, to: “Flights of Fancy Quizmaster”, 19Wilsdon Way, Kidlington, Oxfordshire OX5 1TN.

Some of us also joined in the Wey & Arun Canal’sSmall Boat Cruise on the Loxwood Link and theopening of the restored waterwheel at Orfold Aque-duct in May, and took our smaller publicity standand Canal restoration game to the excellent Saul Junc-tion canal festival in July which will no doubt be thesubject of another report elsewhere in this issue.

BITM’s June dig is the subject of a separate DigReport [next time ...Ed], and in July we were kindlyinvited by Rachael Banyard to join in the first week-end of the Dauntsey Lock Camp, about which youwill no doubt be able to read in the next issue ofNavvies. Which brings the news from BITM up todate!

Stella Wentworth

TTTTThe KL15he KL15he KL15he KL15he KL15“W“W“W“W“We shotbe shotbe shotbe shotbe shotblasted the hedglasted the hedglasted the hedglasted the hedglasted the hedgeeeee, our, our, our, our, our-----selvselvselvselvselves and some ofes and some ofes and some ofes and some ofes and some of the cr the cr the cr the cr the craneaneaneaneane...”...”...”...”...”

Bun

gle

Rebuilding a KL15 Crane

With most of the mechanical bits of the crane inhand the next daunting task was to start the cos-metic work. This was going to involve a bit morethan slapping on a quick coat of paint, as severallayers (five different ones on the base) of existingpaint needed to be removed first... It was time tobring on the shot blaster!

Before doing this we removed the main hoist ropeonto a wooden drum and then disconnected thejib. This would enable us to slew the crane around;we are planning to fit the larger fly jib anyway so itneeded to come off.

Now avid readers of this series [No comment....Ed] will remember a previous trial with theClaverton shot blaster where we decided thatsome fine tuning would be required. So we startedoff with the small Wilts & Berks Canal Trust unit.This was effective but would have taken ages todo the job, so Pete rigged the bigger Clavertonunit.

One of the problems wehad before was that thenozzle kept gettingblocked, so we had ac-quired some finer grit:this proved very effec-tive and once we hadworked out whichvalves to adjust wewere removing paintand rust at a fine rateof knots. A pot full ofshot only lasted a fewminutes, but what a fewminutes! We had to postlookouts to stop the pub-lic walking along thepath during blasting, weshot blasted the hedge(leaves take on astrange skeletal lookonce they have receiveda dose of ricochet shot),the track, ourselves andeven some of the crane!

Despite wearing all the safety kit I can confirmthat the grit gets in everywhere.... Not only canthis be a tad uncomfortable but it buggered upthe pump on my washing machine as well!

We ran out of grit so we tried recycling it; how-ever this was a bad move and clogged all thevalves in the shot blast kit, so we packed it awayuntil we could get some more fresh supplies. Wethen sprayed the base with red oxide primer andit now looks a lot more respectable. Next job willbe to get a LOT more grit and do the rest of thebase, the superstructure, the wheels and the jib.

George ‘Bungle’ Eycott

Above: shotblasting the crane. Below: removingthe main hoist cable onto a wooden drum beforedisconnecting the jib.

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NaNaNaNaNavvies nevvies nevvies nevvies nevvies newswswswsws...inc...inc...inc...inc...including the laluding the laluding the laluding the laluding the latest frtest frtest frtest frtest fromomomomomthe WRthe WRthe WRthe WRthe WRG BoaG BoaG BoaG BoaG Boat Clubt Clubt Clubt Clubt Club

WRG Boat Club news

Well communication has not been all that goodbut we are managing to ‘muddle through’. We havehad an unofficial ‘Members’ Boat Gathering’ at thecampaign rally at Runcorn. At least four club boatswere there and lots of wrgies. It was an excellentrally and both boaters and local residents showedmuch interest and support for the reopening ofRuncorn Locks. They will link Runcorn with theManchester Ship Canal again, and would link di-rectly to the Weaver if we could also get theRuncorn & Western Canal reopened. Lots to cam-paign for and, with luck, lots to do once things getunderway.

I suspect there will also be another unofficial gath-ering for boat club members at Saul Junction. Itwill all have happened by the time you get to readthis and I will, sadly, have missed it.

The two events are most worthy of support butdiffer basically in that the Cotswold Canals arebeing restored and money raised from the gath-ering at Saul will go towards restoration. The rallyat Runcorn was to raise awareness and supportand seemed to me to have achieved that in asplendid way.

Somehow supporting a Campaign Rally seemsmuch more worthwhile than attending a Festival.Still, each is important in it’s own way.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I willnot be boating to National Waterways Festivalbut have booked in my ‘one woman & her dog’sized van. I hope to be there in that. Pleasenote: the club AGM will be held over that week-end.

Lots of help will be needed this year as I don’t knowwhen/if or for how long I will be there. Please get intouch and volunteer! Thanks in advance.

Will members let me know if they require 2004AWCC updates, though there may not be muchof the so-called ‘cruising season’ left by the time Iget them ordered, collected and delivered. Luck-ily not much of the information has changed sincethe last ones were sent out to you all. I have beenmaking use of my membership to get safe moor-ings while we ‘pop back’ to flat earth land for hos-pital appointments (huh, you try ‘popping’ any-where on the public transport system!) It is es-sential that members are able to produce theircurrent boat club membership card when dealingwith other clubs. They will be asked for a currentAWCC card. Our own card will suffice, as it notonly has the WRG BC flag on it but also says‘affiliated to the AWCC’ and has that flag on it too!

Oh how often have I said about the need for carry-ing your card? I then got caught out when askingfor a few days mooring for Straw Bear and findingthat my club membership card was on Lynx! Timeto listen to my own advice. Believe me, you needyour card with you!

xxx Sadie Dean

Lot Reserve Winning Bid

1 £1.00 £3.002 £1.00 £3.003 £1.00 £3.004 £4.00 £3.005 £1.00 £8.006 £1.00 Unsold7 £1.00 £2.508 £5.00 £15.009 £3.50 £6.5010 £2.00 Unsold11 £2.00 Unsold12 £1.00 Unsold13 £2.00 £10.0014 £0.50 Unsold15 £4.00 £8.00

16 £1.00 Unsold17 £4.00 £25.0018 £3.00 Unsold19 £2.00 Unsold20 £4.00 Unsold21 £8.00 £16.5022 £4.00 £10.0023 £1.00 Unsold24 £1.00 Unsold25 £5.00 £14.0026 £0.50 £15.5027 £0.50 Unsold28 £1.00 £3.5029 £3.00 £4.5030 £2.00 Unsold31 £1.00 Unsold32 £1.00 Unsold

33 £10.00 Unsold34 £2.00 £4.5035 £5.00 Unsold36 £4.00 Unsold37 £2.00 Unsold38 £2.00 Unsold39 £2.00 Unsold40 £5.00 Unsold41 £1.00 Unsold42 £3.50 Unsold43 £2.00 Unsold44 £5.00 Unsold45 £4.00 Unsold46 £2.50 £5.5047 £8.00 £11.0048 £2.50 Unsold49 £8.00 Unsold

All unsold books are available at the reserve price, or any reasonable offer, from LaurenSummersgill at Head Office.

Navvies 205 Book Auction: the winning bids

NaNaNaNaNavvies nevvies nevvies nevvies nevvies newswswswsws...inc...inc...inc...inc...including the laluding the laluding the laluding the laluding the latest frtest frtest frtest frtest fromomomomomWRWRWRWRWRG LogisticsG LogisticsG LogisticsG LogisticsG Logistics

Navvies 205 quiz: the answers1. 12345 Once I caught a fish alive2. 7 Days a week3. 5 Gold rings4. Unlucky 135. 24 Hours from Tulsa6. 4 Wheel drive7. 1000000 Dollar question8. 3 Blind mice9. Snow White and the 7 dwarves10. 7 Deadly sins11. 24 Carat gold12. 16 Ounces in a pound13. 9 Lives14. 4 Minute mile15. Famous 516. Bingley 5 Rise17. 40 Foot Drain18. 4 Counties Ring19. 14 Locks20. 3 Bridges21: Hawkesbury Junction22: Hatton23: Buckby Wharf24: Standedge Tunnel25: Little VeniceWell Done to winner Bob Metcalf who sent in theonly alll-correct set of answers, and to the severalrunners up who only had one wrong.

Logistics

I’m a bit lacking in the time department right nowbut suffice to say that I’d like to say:

A huge THANK YOU to Tom and Rachel Jeffriesfor their support and land for our new storage fa-cility. And Tom, if you get more than one mentionin this Navvies as well, it’s only because we’reincredibly grateful!!!

And I’m sure Mark Bennett would also like to thankTom due to the fact that he now has his garage/garden back, as the fridges/freezers have mi-grated North thanks to there being a couple ofempty containers crying out to be filled (now don’tall rush at once!! Please!). Thank you so verymuch Mark. And once again thank YOU very muchand apologies too!

Meanwhile on camps, please can you make sureyou fill in the new style Accident books and postany filled in forms back to Head Office with yourother Head Office paperwork and also fill in theseparate piece of paper for me so I know whatCamps First Aid kit is being used! Thanks.

The Stone masonry kits are also included in thekits this year but please DON’T USE these un-less you are doing stone masonry! I know this willsound obvious, but I also know how tempted somepeople will get to dip into the expensive kit to grabanother lump hammer for various uses! Pleasedon’t.

And keep an eye on those mugs for me won’t youall? Please!

And don’t forget to have fun!Just Jen

Tony Davy

We are sorry to report the death aged 58 of TonyDavy, chairman of Wilts & Berks Canal Trust since1995. We send our sympathies to his family andfriends and to everyone in W&BCT who knew him.

We give our best wishes to the new Trust Chair-man Ken Oliver.

Coming soon...

...Christmas, believe it or not! Or at least the Lon-don WRG and KESCRG Christmas Party dig. Fulldetails of the accommodation, and (more impor-tantly) the theme for the Saturday Night fancy dressparty will appear in the next issue, but in the mean-time note the date (December 4th-5th) and thevenue (Wilts & Berks Canal) in your diaries.

Also coming soon: September Camp on the Wilts& Berks, October Camp on the Grantham, Bon-fire Bash (see p8-9) and New Year Camp on theWilts & Berks. Book now or... errr... book later...

Sympathies...

...from all of us to Sue Watts, of Navvies Sub-scriptions, on the sudden death of her father.

Thank you...

...to everyone (especially KESCRG and BITM)who came to the rescue at the last minute witharticles for this issue when it looked like it wasgoing to be a bit of a thin one due to the unex-pected shortage of camp reports. (a shortage wehope to make up for next time!)

Towels reunited?

Lost (or found) something on a camp? See theLost Property page on www.wrg.org.uk.

Directors of WRG:

John Baylis, MickBeattie, Malcolm Bridge,Roger Burchett,Spencer Collins,Christopher Davey,Helen Davey,Roger Day, NeilEdwards, John Fletcher,Adrian Fry, JohnHawkins, Jennifer Leigh,Judith Moore, MichaelPalmer, Jonathan Smith.

Secretary: Neil Edwards

VAT reg. no : 788 9425 54

© 2004 WRGISSN 0953-6655

Nothing printed may be con-strued as policy or an officialannouncement unless sostated - otherwise WRG andIWA accept no liability for anymatter in this magazine.

Waterway Recovery Groupis a division of Inland Water-ways Enterprises Ltd., a sub-sidiary of the Inland Water-ways Association (a regis-tered charity).

Inland Waterways Enter-prises Registered office:3 Norfolk Court, Norfolk Rd.Rickmansworth WD3 1LT

Tel : 01923 711114Registered no 4305322

Navvies ProductionNavvies is published by Wa-terway Recovery Group, POBox 114, RickmansworthWD3 1ZY and is availableto all interested in promot-ing the restoration and con-servation of inland water-ways by voluntary effort inGreat Britain. Articles maybe reproduced in alliedmagazines provided thatthe source is acknowl-edged. WRG may notagree with opinions ex-pressed in this magazine,but encourages publicationas a matter of interest.

Editor : Martin Ludgate35 Silvester RoadEast DulwichLondon SE22 9PB020-8693 3266

Subscriptions / circulationSue Watts15 Eleanor RoadChorlton-cum-HardyManchester M21 9FZ

Printing and assembly:John & Tess Hawkins4 Links Way, Croxley GrnRickmansworth, HertsWD3 3RQ 01923 [email protected]

NoticeNoticeNoticeNoticeNoticeboarboarboarboarboardddddContacting the chairman:Mike Palmer, 3 Finwood Rd,Rowington, Warwickshire CV35 7DH

Tel: 01564 785293

e-mail: [email protected]

Stampswanted

Send used postagestamps, petrol coupons,old phone cards, emptycomputer printer ink car-tridges to IWA/WRGStamp Bank, 33 Ham-bleton Grove, MiltonKeynes MK4 2JS. All pro-ceeds to canal restoration.

The WRG CanalCamps mobile

phones:07850 422156 (A)

and07850 422157 (B)

page 35

Moving house:Andi Kewley has moved to: 73 BrightonRoad, Bensham, Gateshead NE8 1XQ.

If you move house remember to tell ‘Navvies’.

Good Luck......to two of our Head Office folks: RichardHollidge who will be leaving IWA’s staff inSeptember to work for the EA and LaurenSummersgill who will be returning to uni-versity at the same time.

All the best from ‘Navvies’ to both of you.Yours for only £8!

No, not the editor, the splendid NEW VERSION(including the Croydon Canal!) London WRG ‘tubemap’ T-shirt, enabling you to find your way roundthe capital’s waterside pubs. T-shirts (£8) now instock, sweatshirts (£15) and polo shirts (£13) avail-able to order. Contact Sally Nutt on 07764902863 or [email protected] for details.

Our friends inKESCRG have anew contact address,phone number and email address.

See the NavviesDirectory on

pages 16-17 andupdate your

address books.

Lesl

ey M

cFad

yen

navvies 206

Documents

bad newswswswsws

wrg bitm

grantham canal

agm report

camp report saul festival

canal camp reports

wendover dig report

bonfire bash grantham