62 February 2018 Canal Boat canalboat.co.uk
RESTORATION
“O
ne more camp should do
it.” Mention those words to
a Waterway Recovery
Group volunteer of a
certain age, and you will get a grin and a
knowing look – because that phrase was
used so often on the Montgomery Canal in
the late 1990s that it became a standing
joke in WRG. So it seems strange that the
Monty, the canal restoration where the
volunteers always seemed to be just one
more week’s worth of work away from
completing the current project, should
appear as a ‘new site’ in this year’s
programme of work for WRG’s week-long
Canal Camps.
But there it is, alongside regular work
sites from recent years (such as the
Grantham and Cotswold Canals), newer
ventures (like the River Waveney), and
returns to old favourites (such as the Wey
& Arun). And as well as the week-long
camps, a new feature of the WRG
programme is weekend ‘Family Camps’ to
cater for those with children aged 8-14
(normal camps have a lower age limit of
18) – plus there are major weekend events,
and local groups’ weekend working parties
all year. Between them they create a fair
impression of the amount and scope of
volunteer restoration across the country,
and the contribution of WRG (the
volunteer restoration wing of the Inland
Waterways Association) to that work – and
also a pointer to the way things are going
in the wider world of waterway
restoration. So we’ll take a look at what’s
happening in 2018...WALES AND BORDERS
Let’s start with the Monty, where WRG’s
volunteers are returning after a few years’
absence. And it is actually a bit of a case of
“one more camp”. Work to reopen the next
part of the English length of the canal from
the current limit of navigation below
Maesbury has been held up because of
problems making the channel watertight.
This is nothing new: this was the ‘dry
section’ where porous ground conditions
always caused problems. But even with
modern lining methods now used, there
have been some teething troubles leading
to leakage, and WRG’s volunteers will be
aiming to correct these problems before
work moves on south...
Once this length holds water, work is in
hand to extend it (thanks to LotteryVolunteers look ahead
As Waterway Recovery Group’s canal restoration volunteers launch another year of
Canal Camps across the country, we look at the projects WRG is supporting in 2018
- and how the WRGies’ work fits in with those projects’ wider aims
New project: Berwick Tunnel on the Shrewsbury & Newport