IN THIS ISSUE 116 Part 1 - Chairman's Report Restoration Roundup New Landrover Poddle 2001 Events - & More Events Money - again! Little Bit of Give & Take Part 2 - LLEP Manager's Report Aluminium Can Recycling WAEL Report Fundraising The Important Raffle All the Fun of the Fayre The Editor's Bit Previous issues

Wey-South issue 116  ~ September - November 2001

PART 2 LLEP MANAGER'S REPORT - Eric Walker By the end of April Richard Julian, in a hired digger, duly removed the surplus clay around the Drungewick Lane Canal Bridge. He then went down the bed of the canal removing the recently rooted trees. The volunteers came in behind and removed the reeds which were rapidly re-establishing themselves. Swallows Tiles Ltd of Cranleigh then not only donated 1300 clay sods, but delivered them to the site - many thanks to Mr Aumonier and his workers. These were laid on the bed and puddled-in around the bridge hole and on the temporary bank at the end of the canal by the Midweek Working Party and the Sunday group. So then the stop planks at Drungewick were replaced and the pound gradually refilled. Over a couple of weekends in July no less than six people, huffing and puffing, lifted the four pier capping pieces onto the Drungewick Lane Canal Bridge. And that completed the bridge construction.

Last-minute adjustments to the design of the heavy vehicle crossing having been completed, and the Foot & Mouth disease regulations relaxed, the Drungewick Missing Link project could then commence. This project is funded by a grant from the Local Heritage Initiative, which is a partnership between the Heritage Lottery Fund, Nationwide Building Society and the Countryside Agency. Also there were other inputs to this project in the form of partnership funding, comprising corporate sponsorship, a notional value for the volunteer input and a contribution from WACT. The approved purposes of the grant were to restore a section of canal, raise public awareness and understanding of the history of the canal and carry out research into the history of the canal. The involvement of the schools, the historical research and the results of the research are set out elsewhere in this issue. There were two elements to restoring a section of canal, to extend it by 70m and put in the heavy vehicle crossing. This work started in mid July and is due for completion by the end of August. Following discussions with the piling contractors their price went up sevenfold! However a change to the piling system was proposed that will go some way to reducing such cost escalation. A contract has been let to the designers Tony Gee & Partners to undertake the redesign. [Wey-South Editor's Note: Eric is constantly on the lookout for more volunteers and from personal experience I can say it is well worthwhile turning up. The occasional Sunday (or Thursday) lost to the cause gives back a great sense of self-satisfaction.]

ALUMINIUM CAN RE-CYCLING - John Wood Having recently attended a seminar in London by the Aluminium Re-cycling Organisation (ALUPRO) I thought it might be worth looking again into aluminium can re-cycling as a fund raising initiative. WACT has done this before and, because the price paid for old aluminium cans has increased, it could be worth re-visiting. IF there are sufficient members and friends interested. Here are some facts - £30m is available every year with £lOm already being paid to collectors. Aluminium re-cycling saves 95% of the energy required in the primary production of aluminium from bauxite. The value of aluminium has risen recently and will continue to do so for at least the next 2 years, according to market analysts. ALUPRO will supply free of charge plastic bags to hold the cans, also small flexible magnets in order to check that the can is all aluminum. Aluminium cans have shiny bottoms and very often have the ALU logo on the side. Can crushers, which must only be used with aluminium cans (steel and part steel ones will break the crushers rivets!) are now available for less than £10. Over 75% of Used Beverage Cans (UBCS) are now all aluminium. Every year nearly 5,000,000,000 drinks in aluminium cans are consumed - ready for the empties to be turned into cash! The best price paid for UBCs will be paid at a ALCAN Aluminium Can Re-~cycling Centre at £730 per tonne. There is such a centre in Portsmouth although many local scrap metal merchants will purchase small quantities albeit at a lower price. It may be possible to get pubs, clubs and restaurants to save aluminium cans for us. The downside to all this is that you need lots of cans, which if crushed need not take up too much storage space and it is essential that cans are checked to make sure that they contain no steel. If anyone is interested in this form of fundraising for WACT then I should be pleased to hear from them, BUT from the outset must make it clear that it would require a volunteer(s) to organise as it is something I cannot do, other than offering advice to others.

WAEL REPORT - Dusty Miller [Note: WAEL = Wey & Arun Enterprises Ltd - the company which runs the sales and trip boat] Zachariah Keppel trip boat The last time WEYSOUTH came out we were all in deep gloom about our prospects for the season. We did finally get going at the middle of May and were very encouraged by the amount of take up for our trips. It was as though a switch had been pulled and people just appeared from nowhere. The charters are always a bit thin in April and this continued into May, I think it’s fair to say that we are probably down in charter numbers as clients stayed away into June. The water conditions have been relatively good, we lost only one week so far and the vast majority of charters have gone ahead as planned, even into early August! This year we have tried out a new system of getting the crews together. This was dreamt up by Roger Harbut - refined in discussion with Tony Pratt - and brought into reality by five stalwarts, who have taken on a month each. This seems to have worked well; we will be reviewing it at the end of season, and pick up on any changes needed. Roger keeps overall control and acts as a fixer when problems occur. Also new this year have been Enthusiasts trips, these got off to a shaky start, thanks to the Foot and Mouth problems but are showing promise and we hope will start to attract more takers as we near the completion of the Aqueduct. These trips along with the Charters are the only ones to travel the full navigable distance to Drungewick. The other, shorter, trips are proving very popular and earning us goad revenue. Sales Our Sales Team has not been idle, in spite of a number of venues being called off - again Foot & Mouth - Fanny Lines was able to pick up some other early season venues and also started to set up a stall at the Onslow Arms, which has proved to be a useful source of income. Fanny is looking to extend this operation, and David Isted is looking to make the lean to hut at the Onslow into a suitable base for the stall. By the time this is being read the bulk of the season will be over and I hope to be able to report at the next General Meeting that we have come through in good shape after what was probably the worst start to any season in our short history. FUNDRAISING - Ian Lauder WACT Fundraising can lead you into some very surprising waters. For instance:- The sausages Since I volunteered for BarBQ duty at the Clock House open day, the office, the Chairman and myself have been asked the burning question where did I buy the sausages! Its not particularly the answer 'Tesco's' that is embarrassing but the fact that I have to then explain that the taste is created by the cooking method that cannot be replicated in the average kitchen. The best I can advise is to get pork sausages with a herb mixture such as Lincolnshire recipe - don’t prick them - place on the wire grid over hot coals so that their fat drips down and ignites into fierce flames and black smoke to seal them with a unique flavour - just before they turn into inedible hard charcoal sticks move them to a cooler part to cook very very slowly in their own trapped juices. The flavours gently merge to provide a great taste. Heritage Lottery funding Then as Anthony Woolhouse and myself were in the office putting finishing touches to the Heritage Lottery Fund application for the Drungewick Aqueduct, we were discussing various points and possibilities with Peter Foulger. It is a relief that they will now consider funding specific projects such as the Loxwood Link Extension rather than the restoration of the entire canal. I have long held the view that those whose influence, involvement and support is essential to enable me to take my boat from the Grand Union Canal to Littlehampton, take one look at the list of waterway authorities who would have to agree (BW, Thames, National Trust, WACT, Arun Navigation and the Environmental Agency), and quietly put our file back in the cabinet. Just as I was also imagining my narrowboat with the requisite window full of licenses, Peter casually mentioned that the W&A was of course built for wide beam barges as distinct from the narrowboat. Thoughts went quickly to Dutch barges, then to Thames riverboats - London’s lost route to EUROPE? Now that must surely be worth some politician asking for the file. Prizes won in schools Education Project In helping our fundraising by arranging for the sponsorship of our highly successful PR book and CD, it was Lord Sterling’s idea that we should have an educational competition for schools based on the W&A Canal. I therefore had the pleasure of delivering prizes to two of the schools before they broke up for summer. I have to say that we were all staggered by the high standard of the written accounts about a Victorian family working on the canal between Bramley and Newbridge that we received from St.Catherine’s School in Bramley. Then I went to Loxwood Junior School and was again overwhelmed by the huge involvement they have with the canal. The classroom walls are literally covered in paintings of ZK, locks and bridges, and photos of their canal trip when the children all dressed in Victorian costume. A huge collage depicting W&A scenes hangs in the hall. As if these very pleasant surprises weren’t enough, their visit also helped us to secure the Local Heritage Initiative grant of£2O,OOO to extend the Loxwood Link ever closer to the Aqueduct site. Now that’s what I call a Community Project.

THE IMPORTANT RAFFLE - Iris Piggott As the Trust is not a large National Organisation, we cannot expect support from an equivalent commercial firm and have a raffle prize of, say, a car. We must therefore be more than grateful to David Dare who runs the Heart of England Hotel Narrow Boats, who has once again offered a week's holiday for two on his boats as the first prize in what is actually the Christmas Raffle. This prize is worth £1,100. The holiday is especially generous because it is the Anderton Lift Special and all canal enthusiasts must realise the significance of this and we must be proud that David has allowed this important week’s holiday to be used when he certainly would be fully booked. Anyone wanting to know more about the Heart of England Hotel Narrow Boats may like to speak to Steve Jones, who was the lucky winner of the holiday last year, or myself having spent several holidays afloat. In passing it is worth mentioning that anyone who would like to learn something about handling narrow boats would do well to have a holiday with David who must be one of the best and efficient skippers afloat. ALL THE FUN OF THE FAYRE - Iris Piggott Having chided Fanny Lines about the lack of publicity on the work done by the Sales Section of WAEL and been given her approval to write about a sales incident, she will of course not approve of the fact that I feel that it should be mentioned just how much work Fanny herself does. Not only does she purchase all the goods and run two sales stalls on many weekends in the summer, but also visits bookshops who will sell our books. This may not seem very arduous, but the job of packing up her small car for enough goods to sell at a show, including the tent, and re-packing after a sale is very much so. Fanny Lines The Shamley Green Fayre, and a tent .... I was 'sort of’ in charge at the Shamley Green Fayre on Saturday 2nd June, a venue not visited before. We had all been praying for rain, and it came quite early that morning. Fanny arrived at 9 a.m. to bring me the goods, and reported driving through heavy rain. In response to a phone call, the organiser said there had been no rain at Shamley Green, so I later set off to prepare for the 2 p.m. opening. Peter Shotton was the other worker and he was a tower of strength. Putting up the tent is not difficult but it has to be done in the correct way. The four roof supports are made of three metal tubes, one double-ended female and two male sections, laid in a square and fixed at the corners. The centre roof sections are then put in place diagonally to a centrepiece. The top half of the legs are fitted and the tent placed over the framework. The bottom half of the legs are then put in place and apart from a few adjustments all is ready. Maybe we started too early. Because the moment the tent was complete a black cloud came over, and the rain came together with a howling gale. I had previously looked for the guy ropes without success and so had Peter. Fortunately there were three schoolgirls nearby, and it was thanks to their help that the tent survived. There were the five of us hanging on for dear life just preventing the tent taking off as it swayed in the wind and the roof supports decided to come apart. In desperation at the first sign of a lull I rushed to phone my husband to ask him to bring any rope and pegs he could lay his hands on. With the continuing lull it was decided to take the bottom half of the legs off and lower the tent to fix the roof. The girls were most helpful. Having done this Peter had another fish round in the boxes and found the guy ropes. So it was up to full height again and fixed guy ropes before any setting out of the stall was begun, and luckily there was no more wind that day. The event was very worth while. As well as the sales which were made Peter won the first prize in the raffle, and a cheque for £25 has been received from the organisers as part of the surplus made from the Fayre profits and distributed amongst local organisations.

THE EDITOR'S BIT - Gary Hogsden I know it shouldn’t, but I am always constantly surprised by the speed of progress of work on the Canal. Recently I have been unable to attend working parties for a number of months, yet having attended for the last few Sundays, I am amazed at the changes. Having not visited the Drungewick Lane site since late June, the last I saw was work still being carried out on the Bridge. Yet my last visit showed that the bridge is now complete and work is well underway on the heavy plant crossing, under Eric Walker's guidance.

In addition the inimitable Dave Kersley has been employed felling and removing a deceased tree to allow the winding hole to be cleared and ground works started on extending the canal to the site of the aqueduct. Amazing what a few dedicated people can achieve! The current 'end' of the navigable section near to Drungewick Lane. The bed of the canal and a towpath are currently being re-instated. [photo: John Wood] See also - First pictures at the Bridge Re-opening day.

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Last updated September 2001