Diary of events:
Camps Repor ting fr om Dauntse porting from Dauntseyy on the Wilts & Ber Berkks Canal... Camp 07: Wilts & Berks Canal Dauntsey, 17th-24th July The intention on this camp was to work on Locks 3 and 4 of the Seven Locks flight at Tockenham, but after numerous delays to our planning application, permission was only granted at the start of the week — and then with a landscaping proviso that should not have been included, as it was all agreed months ago. In the end, the only work we could actually do there was to erect a new fence to stop the cattle in the adjacent field converging on canal and towpath and churning up all the vegetation. This was a 3-strand barbed wire fence that had to be strained by hand, as it was on a curve, but fortunately we had plenty of bodies to help. Apart from that, the work on the camp was divided between Foxham and Dauntsey.
Friday: Dave Wedd and Phill had come down early to help move equipment and materials around to prepare for the camp. About a mile of road up Lyneham Banks had been resurfaced recently, and I had persuaded the contractors to provide us with 27 loads of road planings (free!) for use on the towpath and several other areas, and using the hired digger these were scraped back into conveniently situated piles, and a start was made on filling in ruts on the towpath. Some of the infill which we were planning to dig out was going to go onto the farmer’s field, so the fence was removed in preparation. Dave Rudland arrived on Friday night, so he could put in a full day’s work on Saturday. Saturday: George retrieved Blue from the Hereford & Gloucester and brought it down to Dauntsey, and he and Dave Wedd fixed some minor faults on our dumpers. Dave Rudland spent the day strimming a long length of towpath, and in the process found a wasps’ nest - or rather it found him! The result was that for possibly the first time in his life, Dave had some plump bits of his anatomy. We managed to knock over a willow tree, and removed two other unwanted frees, and some satisfying bonfires burned some of the strimmings. After scraping back the topsoil, a start was made on dumping and spreading some infill out of the wharf area on Farmer Jeff’s field. Some of the campers arrived in time to do some work on site, and Luke took them up for some tidying up at Foxham. A towpathwalker’s dog peed down Isabel’s rucksack, its owner making out that it was no big deal. Obviously happened to her all the time... Sunday: We had two teams, under Luke on the stone wharf wall... and Tom Tur ner, at Foxham preparing two bridges for painting, and a start was made by Men in White Suits on the actual painting of the wooden farm bridge.
Fay (Yu Liang), our Chinese student, was unfortunately a bit disappointed that she had picked a camp with not much technical input. She is a postgraduate electronic engineering student, and had hoped for more of a challenge to her engineering abilities (and a shower every night!) and she decided to go home half way through the week. The other studentage volunteers, however, felt that the work and the accommodation lived up to the promises on the website, and they cheerfully undertook any task that was asked of them, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all their hard work, without which we would never have achieved so much.
At Dauntsey, Ron-the-brick Robertson, our local brickiemaster, worked with our local work party on the stone-faced wharf wall. Ron promised to come along most days this week to instruct some of the newcomers in this skill. Some big loads of concrete that had been demolished earlier (in true Blue Peter style) were taken by tractor and trailer to the next farm up from Dauntsey, where the farmer needed it for some hardstanding area - he has been an ‘Anti’, and we’re trying to win him round to let us work on his bit of canal. The concrete had come from demolition of a garage that had been built many years ago on the canal infill.
Tom Turner
We had twenty people booked on the camp, plus help from local volunteers, and BITM for the first weekend - 29 sat down to tea on the first night! The age range was also quite wide, ten of them being 21 and under, with 5 ‘D-of-Es’, but amongst those over 21 we had some Dauntsey regulars, so they could lead small teams undertaking several different tasks, which was a big help. Phill Cardy had sponsored the hire of a 7-tonne digger, which Dave Rudland extended for a further two days, and we also had the excavator ‘Blue’ (although that Laying brick copings didn’t work very well until George ‘Bungle’ Eycott could come at the end of the week and give it a quick service), and with 2 dumpers we had plenty of machinery on site.
page 10