Camp reports ... the start of work on the Wilts & BerksJubileeJunctionproject... The Abingdon Job Look happy you stupid bastards, we won didn t we? Actually we didn t. The first day of Camp 0605 led by myself and Ed saw England go out of the World Cup. Not that our volunteers got to see it happen because we d already dragged them down to site to show them The Field that was to be their workplace for the next week. You ve all seen The Field it s that one that s been in all the photos with a little sign in it which says Site of the proposed junction of the Wilts & Berks Canal with the River Thames . That sign has been there for two years with only dog-walkers and fishermen to appreciate it until now Does he really need all this equipment? He says he does By 6pm on Saturday 1st July all our volunteers had arrived, comprising a healthy mix of regular wrgies, sometime-canal-campers and fresh-faced newbies. One lucky person even got to visit the black hole that is Ed s garage to pick up all the extra tat (sorry, Very Important Tools) that he couldn t fit in his Land Rover the first time round. The group included a strong London WRG contingent, and 3 D-of-E ers good to see that they haven t vanished from WRG entirely! Our minibus/van/kit-trailer entourage had already arrived earlier in the day (many thanks to Just Jen and Nigel for driving) followed by Harri T who arrived with the shopping and proceeded to cook up a fantastic lasagne pretty impressive considering the oven was sans door.
It s a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team. And that means you do everything I say. After a rousing motivational speech by the leaders and the traditional giggle at the safety video we were ready to start. Rowena led a team of rutfillers who worked to improve the access road a very important and strategic job to keep the fishermen smiling. Richard s team did some quality willow pruning at the Thames end of the site, to improve sight-lines for when the new channel is dug. Everyone else set to work scrub-bashing on the site of the new footpath. Suzie and I found time to tend the bonfire in between gossiping. Taz was trained on Blue, and Nigel and Richard were also trained on the skid-steer loader by Harry Watts who d kindly agreed to help us out for a day.
Stuart Stone
The rest of the accommodation was somewhat mobbed with depressed football fans who had turned up unannounced to watch the England game, so we left them sobbing into their Carling and went to have a look at the site. We d got ourselves a fair collection of Big Boys Toys to play with (although the Girls soon stole them back) including two dumpers, Blue the excavator and the skid-steer loader which arrived later in the week.
The Field was already starting to look different, having been stripped of topsoil a couple of weeks earlier, but the site for our camp s new footpath, fence and ramp was still relatively untouched (mwha ha ha). It made a nice change to begin something from scratch, and it was especially good to see that all the hard work and negotiations on the part of the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust had finally come to fruition well almost. There was the teeny tiny problem of them not actually having been granted planning permission for the work at the time of our arrival, despite frantic attempts on the part of project director Martin Buckland and his team to get it sorted. However, we had every assurance that planning permission would be granted three days later on Tuesday, so with some hasty re-shuffling and re-branding of some jobs as enabling works , we were able to find enough to keep everyone busy.
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Newbie Matt on the vibrating roller