We start on the Silver Lane road bridge, the bank to the west of the road: here's Graham trying to make 'oles, while Malcy sorts them out. ("green side up, Malcy!" "I'm not Alistair, you know!") I'm kept busy ferrying bagfulls from the van to the working site.
As you can see, we've got quite a lot to do!
As we get to the end of the snowdrops, I wander down to see what the rest of the gang are up to: I can see that Roy and his chainsaw have been here.
Ah, they're digging out the edge of the towpath, the first step towards levelling it. We're going to need a revetment, ie a row of long posts driven vertically down on the water-edge of the towpath, so that we can build it up and make it level. At present it slopes at about 45 degrees, and is not particularly easy to walk along. As a first step, we scrape away the build-up of soil, silt and general muck along the hedge line. In the background Vic and Malcy are putting up the larch-lap fencing panels by the side of the Canal Cottages, as we agreed with the landlord, and once the digging is done, we'll put up post-and-rails all the way along.
"Roy," says I, "We've done all the snowdrops, anything else to plant?" "oh arr," he replies, "have you opened the side door yet?". Ah. Just a few more, then! "Take the van down to the Wharf" we are told "and get working on that bank."
So here we are, ten minutes later, back at the Wharf again. We recently dredged this stretch, and piled up the dredgings along the hedge-line as agreed with the landowner. Now that it's had time to settle, we can start the mammoth task of planting it up. We have bluebells, snowdrops, some odd trees, some primroses, all sorts of things, all donated by members.
Here's a demonstration of Graham's interesting "plant it wiv me welly" technique. Well, it works!
And here's Bob showing that there's nothing wrong with his back today!
To give you an idea of the scale of this project, here's the bank stretching off into the distance....
But it will all be worth it next spring, when hopefully a good proportion of the stuff that we have planted will sprout and flower.