Briefly, I forgot to take my camera, duuuh, left it on the bottom of the stairs. However, I had a somewhat different morning in store today, as we were being visited by Martin Spackman and his wife Ruth. Martin is writing a series of articles for the local magazine "Community Times in the Vale" and this week he's interviewing us.
Martin and Ruth arrived on time at East Challow Village Hall, and had a chat to us as we arrived and geared up for a day of removing fallen willow trees from the Stockham Park section. I took them on a quick tour of our recent work at West Challow, Silver Lane and the Childrey footpath section, and then on to Childrey Wharf, explaining what we'd done and what we had yet to do. This took a bit longer than the "ten minutes" I'd thought - more like an hour! I didn't realise I knew quite so much about the canal!
After the tour, we made our way back to East Challow and walked up the towpath to rejoin the rest of the group, who had been hard at work getting chains around an enormous fallen willow tree, and setting up the Tirfor.
At last! I get to see a Tirfor in action! Ever since I joined this group, which must be six or seven years ago, I have heard about Tirfors but have never seen one. For those of you who, like me, had never heard of this beast, it's a manual winch arrangement, with which you can move heavy items. Very useful for places where you can't get the heavy machinery in, or for when the fuel budget has run out. All it needs is a strong enough anchor - normally a handy tree - and a succession of stout fellows to operate it. It's a bit slow, the cable moves about half an inch for every turn of the lever, but it's very steady and as long as there are enough of you to take turns at it, it's not particularly hard work.
I haven't been able to find a picture of one as old as ours, but here's what a new one looks like:
That big pole on the left is about four feet long, and that's the lever that the stout fellows (that's us) operate. If the item you're moving is only extremely heavy, then you just heave the lever to and fro while standing next to the Tirfor (it's about two foot long). However, if your item is massively heavy, then you swivel the Tirfor on it's side and walk to and fro, pushing the lever with you. Another advantage of the long lever is that two of you can operate it together, meaning that ludicrously heavy items can be moved!
On this day, we had a merely extremely heavy tree trunk to move: and at last, I've had a go at a Tirfor! I can happily report that it's not that bad at all! Malcy and I took turns, with Doug as back-up, while Bob and Roy hacked away at the trunk with axes and chainsaws. Once the bottom of the trunk had been severed, it was just a question of working away in turns, moving the huge trunk gradually across the cut and up the bank, where it was then nibbled into chunks of about three feet in length by the chainsaw, and rolled out of the way under the hedge, where it will gradually rot down and provide masses of habitat for wildlife. I'm so sorry that I don't have photos of the stately progress of this massive trunk across the canal. Mind you, I'm quite happy not to be able to reproduce the smell from the silt that it stirred up - phew! Wot a whiff!
It took us the best part of the day to get this work done, and at the next work party we'll be back to repeat the whole operation on yet another willow that's collapsed down across the towpath, 50 yards further up. Let's hope I remember the camera!