Winter canal camping with the ‘Wergies’
FIVE days of winter canal restoration work, volunteering at the Waterways Recovery Group (WRG) camp on the derelict Buckingham Canal, was a different way of spending the winter break.
Facing the challenge of clearing 300m of canal bed and towpath, which probably hadn’t been touched since the canal was abandoned in about 1935, were 28 WRG volunteers, known as Wergies. The average age for this camp was 60 and included four married couples.
For the modest sum of £60, they were allocated a bunk bed – taking their own bedding – two full meals and one snack meal a day. Accommodation was provided in the scout building at the canalside village of Cosgrove on the Grand Union Canal.
The bunks were in four dormitories, two all-male, one all-female, and one mixed– married couples only! Two couples had brought their own campervans but otherwise joined in for meals and evening socialising which included board games, nattering, or going down to the Barley Mow Inn.
With two showers there was an ample supply of hot water and the building had underfloor heating throughout. I was told by IWA volunteers co-ordinator Jenny Hodson that accommodation here was better than at most WRG camps, mainly based at village halls where volunteers sleep on the floor unless they took their own camp bed.
Two of the volunteers acted as cooks which was a pretty full-time job. The night before my visit, they had served homecooked lasagne with garlic bread and apple crumble and custard to follow.
Dawn to dusk
The WRG plan was to work outside from dawn till dusk in the bleak midwinter, heedless of the wind and weather, only one afternoon being lost. Official onsite start time was nine, with tools down at three provided there was sufficient light for safe working. The volunteers carried their hand tools half a mile to and from the site, wheelbarrows only being provided for large heavier tools.
On our arrival at the scout building, we met up with Buckingham Canal Society trustee and executive officer Terry Cavender and walked across a large field down to the line of the former canal.
He explained that the top end of that field, close to the main Milton Keynes to Northampton road, had now been sold for modern warehousing, with the planning gain including substantial help with the canal restoration project.
This would help fund the building of a new canal, the diversion being necessary because the canal had been cut in the 1960s by the upgraded A5 road from the new town of Milton Keynes to Towcester.
Due to the topography of the route, the canal diversion would drop down 11m by two pairs of staircase locks. It would then pass under the A5 by an enlarged existing culvert linked to the River Ouse; then lock up by three locks to rejoin the original canal line for the remaining eight or so miles to Buckingham.
A right of access over the land at no cost had already been agreed with the generous landowner and property developer Pete Winkelman, chairman of Milton Keynes Dons Football Club. Beyond the A5 the canal was then in open country and relatively free of obstructions. Terry was hopeful that the full restoration would be completed within 10 years.
Our next stop was at Bridge 2, which had been much reduced in height over the years to take heavy farm machinery. While it did not block the canal itself, its lowered bridge-hole would now impede navigation under it. The problem had already been addressed with the restored Bridge 1 and the pressure was now on to sort Bridge 2, as the canal was already back in water to the Grand Union Canal – however shallow.
The Wergies had only been at it for three and half days, but already more than 200m of trees and vegetation had been cleared from the canal bed and the towpath, revealing the old canal bed.
Trees on the non-canal edge of the towpath and the non-towpath side had been pruned, and where dead or diseased they had been removed. It was already starting to look like a canal.
Where possible, trees and branches had then been cut into logs, to be given to villagers and liveaboard boaters on the canal at the Grand Union end, who had been so co-operative in moving their boats to allow for dredging works at that end to take place.
Long-forgotten canal artefacts revealed by the clearance included a brick-breastwork and paddle winding gear for letting water run out from the canal, when heavy rain required it.
The winding gear was in such good condition that, with minimum repair work, it could be reused, having been hidden for more than 85 years. With the completion of the works-in-hand, the towpath would reopen to walkers and cyclists, connecting it to existing footpaths and rights of way to provide a new circular canal walk.
I subsequently learnt that the new circular walk is already proving very popular and that the team’s endeavours have inspired new volunteers to join the Buckingham Canal Society.