A quintessentially rural canal, the 33 mile long Grantham traverses three shire counties

15th - 16th October

WRG BITM work camp at Cropwell Bishop - report by Martin Day

For anybody who knows the area we were in the dip in the road opposite the lime works. For those who don’t know the area we were on the road out from Cropwell Bishop where the road runs alongside the canal and up to a cross roads where the Lime kiln pub is. WRG wanted to come and help us remove marked willow trees that were blocking the ditch that runs from the overspill weir tucked into the corner of the site where the water will run down alongside the road and disappear under the canal. You couldn’t get near it for growth but after lots of chain sawing and root pulling the ditch and roadway looks very smart. After clearing the spill weir of 34 years of dead leaves and roots – yes I know it’s 34 years because that was when I cleared it last.

Do you want to know about the good times or the bad times? Well we ordered the big chipper two months ago from a local plant hire but he hadn’t got one that big so he sub contracted to a firm in Nottingham who sub contracted a firm who had one in Kettering. They told us it was pristine having just had £2000 spent on it at the manufacturers so unlike the one we hired last year for the Bonfire Bash which was blunt we should have no trouble. From the same plant hire who was based (thankfully) just around the corner we collected a small excavator, which we took to the site. We then collected the chipper and set it up. We started it and it would only run backwards in its release mode, it would not go forwards. We finally got the service engineer from Leicester and together we tried to fathom out where the problem lay. After a lot of messing he and Gary the original plant man got it running and because we were so far behind with a road full of cut down trees they very kindly offered to stop and feed for us to help out. Suddenly there was an almighty bang and one of the scooper blades in the fan appeared at great speed straight out into the back of the chippings trailer. This brought a sudden halt to the proceedings and the chipper was towed away. Gary managed to find us another one at Aston near Derby and went to fetch it. Time was roaring along and the road was full of trees and no sign of us getting cleared.

Well, the replacement, albeit, smaller chipper arrived and everyone worked like stink – not literally – well a bit, and cleared it all. Smudge and Rachael – women love these little excavators - cleared the ditch; Taz who is an airline pilot went off to fly to some exotic place and we all retired to the village hall.

The good bits—Brilliant food. Not only pork but also beef and cabbage, carrots, boiled and roast potatoes followed by crumble. We were all stuffed and to cap it all Colin had obtained a barrel of Webster’s local brewed real ale. I was told it was excellent but I didn’t have any because my daughter was expecting her first child on the Monday and I was on ‘Red Alert’ to travel to Kettering to see her. She managed to last until the end of the work camp and now at 18.30 she has rung to say her waters have gone and prepare for take off. So I will see if I can finish this and send it to Colin to send out.

Future work.

Bridge 19 will require several weekends work and upon clearing the spill weir at the lime works we think that we could either reface the run off surface and brick the sides or better still drill it all out and start again as we did at Plungar.

Welcome to our new members Fliss and Vanessa who joined on Sunday after having two trailerfuls of logs for their fires and stove we hope you liked what you saw (work wise of course) and look forward to teaching you concrete and bricklaying.

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