November Work Party

The November work party saw the final touches put to the works at Bottom Lock. Ever since last year it had been our intention to install quadrants to make pushing the gates easier and, incidentally, to improve the overall appearance of the lock.

A great deal of the work had been completed during the October work party. The quadrant on the Lock Island had been finished. This comprised of marking and digging out the area for the hardcore followed by mixing and laying the concrete. The final task was to set some cobbles into the concrete to push against when opening the gate. The second quadrant was also dug out in October but a lack of materials curtailed further work.

A small, but select, group assembled at Bottom Lock on the Sunday morning in November and got all the equipment and materials into the right place. This involved moving everything over the sluices, the lock island and the bridge over the lock! After the preparation work in October all that remained was to mix a large quantity of concrete to fill in the excavated area and then carefully set in the cobbles at regular intervals. Sounds simple but it did involve a lot of barrowing!

We had lunch in unseasonably warm weather, it’s not often you can sit out in t-shirts in November! The site was tidied up and we then went to Cogglesford Lock to assess the jobs for the December work party.

Steve Hayes