Camp report
And on the Wilts & Berks, Moose, Ian and the team are clearing scrub from the Pocket Park - and struggling to get their fires going...
Wilts & Berks (3): Shrivenham
before they could take anything of a decent size other than twigs. The scary thing was Tim, he who has put out more fires than he has lit, actually got his fire going fairly well, fairly quickly (just after morning tea break!) but only once. We had a couple of brush cutters and a couple tirfors also working around the site (until one broke its shear pin and there was no spare?), also a couple of Land Rover mounted winches - boys and their toys... By the last day on site, the whole area had changed dramatically. Another day or so would have seen it all done. But the locals were already commenting on how much space there was now. During the week, we met up with the other Wilts and Berks camp and had a skittles evening but obviously they had not been working hard enough on site as they were
All photos by Tim Lewis
Hi All! Just a short report regarding the WRG Xmas camp, hopefully a full report in the next Navvies. I was leading the camp with Ian Bunn as my assistant and Maria cooking; we were staying in the village hall at Watchfield, which is a nice hall with two showers and plenty of room. We had up to 25 people over the week. The work site was at the Pocket Park in Shrivenham. We had to do a simple cut, slash and a bit of burning, the area to be attacked was in a rectangle shape and three side bordered ditches. Easy! The plan was to have one large fire being fed by all that was cut, but it didn’t really work out that way and on the second day on site we started two extra fires, just to keep up with how much was being cut down. I always thought I was fairly successful at starting fires and getting them to burn, but what with the trees we were cutting being blackthorn, hawthorn, and only a couple other trees, the quality was not there and it was wet and on several occasions also frozen. The fires in the morning took so long to get going that it would be lunch time
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