January 2025 work party report

January 10-12

With temperatures down to -7oC overnight, ‘bonfire management’ was a popular activity.

Severe cold weather in the days before and during this work party resulted in frozen ground, frozen channel and plenty of black ice. Some planned activities such as hedge planting and hedge laying were therefore postponed but, with extensive vegetation clearance also planned, the perfect opportunity for volunteers to keep warm was achieved.

Keeping toasty

Clearance is the first step in restoration and, looking to the (not too distant) future, scrub and over 2,000 sizeable saplings were cleared from 170 metres of channel west of Schoolhouse Bridge. Aided by the desire to keep warm, the felling rate was relentless. There were heroic efforts by relays of volunteers to haul the material along the towpath to the bonfire site and for others to keep up with feeding the material onto the fire. No one felt the cold!

Before…
…and after

Work is progressing rapidly and we expect to relocate from the Crickheath compound to a compound site by Schoolhouse Bridge later this year. Apart from channel clearance, further preparation activity took place in the form of improving access to this compound for larger delivery vehicles. The ramp from the road was substantially improved by widening and reducing the gradient.

Back towards the Crickheath end of the site, work to profile the channel continued. Due to the prevailing ground conditions and topography, the channel for this project is lined in some areas and unlined in others. A further 80 metres of channel, continuing on from the areas completed last year, requires lining and profiling the channel in this area was started. Once the thick crust of frozen ground was broken through this proved relatively straightforward.

Profiling the lined section

Just before Christmas, the stop planks at Crickheath Bridge were cracked open allowing the water level in Phase 1A by Crickheath Wharf to equalize with the navigable waterway at Crickheath Basin. Thick ice covering the channel provided some attractive photo opportunities but prevented making the pipe connection between between Phase 1A and the isolated 1B (which has already been largely filled with rainwater). This job that will now have to wait to a future date.

Posted in Shropshire Union Canal Society.

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