Camp reports
New Year on the Wilts & Berks
Rachael Banyard reports from the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust s own Festive Season camp
Wilts & Berks Christmas Camp 2007 Valve Chamber. We had the use of Blue to Once again, our happy band of friends achieved a fantastic amount over the camp, and in fact they apparently enjoyed themselves so much that six of them stayed on to work a large part of New Year s Day before they staggered off home! Rob stayed with us from the Saturday before Christmas, and he and Di and myself got quite a bit of scrub and trees cleared, cut up and burnt on our bonfire at Lock 4 at Seven Locks before the camp proper got under way. Di was mainly hedgelaying over the whole period (as well as cooking), because I had managed to get a hedging grant arranged for the landowner, who is generous enough to donate all that is left over after she has erected fencing, which is very useful towards our branch funds. Most our usual Christmas campers were able to make it, as well as Steve Moody (who was a new wrgie this year, and is becoming one of our regulars), and also Bernd Schimansky. We had not seen Bernd for about three years, during which time he has been home in Germany procreating with his English wrgie wife Daphne, resulting in two new offspring. With all the recent babies born in WRG, and two or three more expected shortly, we discussed whether we ought to consider having a WRG creche alongside camp sites, complete with sand pit, miniature spades, mattocks and buckets, brick kits (lego bricks of course), and some small hard hats. It was good to catch up with Alan Simister and find out what he has been doing with the RNLI at Eastbourne. Unfortunately, Jeremy was unable to come, as during the cold spell before Christmas a pipe burst on his boat forcing him to paddle in 2 of water, so he had to spend the week sorting it out. Welsh Alan was also confined to barracks with a trapped nerve in his neck, so we hope he ll be better soon. Taz had been hoping to spare a day or two, but probably the imminent Tarrant addition kept him at home. A major target at Foxham over the camp was to stop a leak in the Rosemary
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drive in some piles, and Luke had been given the free use of a piling hammer from Aldridge Piling Equipment. This turned out to be extremely noisy, so Ray - bearing in mind the sensitive nature of a dog s ears - tied Mina to a tree some distance down the towpath until they had finished. This slowed the leak down, but we then had to puddle quite a lot of clay behind the piling to seal it totally, which took most of a second day. I had been lent two wacker plates from Rapid Hire of Wootton Bassett, who are very sympathetic to our cause and usually manage to find some piece of equipment to lend us over Christmas camps. The water levels are already rising in the canal. By Saturday we were all back at Seven Locks, cutting down more trees and scrub and burning, hedgelaying, block laying and puddling, and all this continued until the end of the camp. We have made excellent progress on Lock 4 over the last year. When Bernd first arrived, he enquired what the ground was like underfoot. He was first informed that it was not suitable for bedroom slippers, but one comment was that that depended what sort of bedroom he was used to. He had not met two-year-old Mina before, so he politely enquired of her whether she bites? The reply came instead from the washer-up: No, but I do! Most of us were jigsaw addicts, and we had two new 1,000 piece ones for Christmas, so this was the preferred occupation for the evenings rather than going out to cinema or pub. We actually managed to complete both of these, which had been quite challenging, and a final 500 piece one during the two hours leading up to midnight on New Year s Eve before Martin opened the champagne. Rob selected from the new camp brochure about eight of the 2008 camps he could go on, fitted between his National Trust camps. We worked hard, ate well, and became jigsaw experts, and Mina got covered in clay, and my thanks to everyone. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the camp. Rachael Banyard