The Wey & Arun Canal Trust was delighted to record the highest attendance ever for their Annual General Meeting at Billingshurst this year. Membership of the Trust is rising rapidly; the 2,000th member signed up in September 2005 and the total has now reached around 2,150. About 100 members took up an invitation to make a day of it and visited various sites around the canal. A boat trip along the whole length of the restored section at Loxwood proved so popular that both the Trust's boats (the 30-seat Zachariah Keppel and the 12-seat John Smallpeice were used. There were also guided tours of the Lordings site, near Billingshurst, with its restored aqueduct, waterwheel and flood lock, and the B2133 crossing site at Loxwood. Here the Trust are removing a major blockage to complete restoration by lowering the water level and constructing a new lock.

At the same time, in Billingshurst Village Hall, the Trust's Publicity group were welcoming about 200 members of the public to an exhibition on the latest Wey & Arun projects, with talks by Jim Phillips and Tony Pratt. This excellent attendance owed much to Billingshurst resident Bob Knight and his helpers, who had heroically distributed leaflets to nearly all households in the village.

At the meeting in the afternoon, Trust Chairman Peter Foulger gave a full update on the Trust's activities, highlighting progress in Bramley, where a new canal route will be necessary, and the Completion Strategy being produced by consultants Atkins. The Trust had been fortunate in attracting generous support from legacies and other charitable trusts, but multi-million pound funding would be necessary to restore the whole historic route between the Wey and Arun rivers.

After a short break, there was a rare showing of a short film, 'Forgotten Waters', produced in 1974 by the Guildford-based group Circle Eight. The hapless hero misses his Portsmouth train at London's Waterloo station and decides to follow the waterway route instead, taking to a series of boats, a horse and a bicycle along the way. Eric Walker, project manager for the B2133 crossing, then presented the work that would be carried out on Phase 2 during the Summer. This will consist of lowering Brewhurst Lock and the section of the canal between the lock and the road, ready for the construction of the bridge (technically a tunnel, because it will be more than 20 metres long), that should follow during 2007.