It’s gone. The gap in the towpath is no more. RIP
“July was marked by two extra work party days thanks to large numbers of corporate volunteers from Colas Rail during the week following the regular work party”. Said Tom Fulda, restoration project manager, “An enormous amount was achieved over these five days”.
Work sweltered on four out of the five days (incorporating the country’s third heatwave of the year). However, torrential rain overnight on Saturday complicated matters and slowed progress on Sunday morning. Volunteers consoled themselves with the knowledge they hadn’t come here to remain clean.
The main event was completing the current work area – lining and blocking the remaining gap in the channel and closing the gap in the towpath which has provided our point of access to the work area. Lining a straight channel of regular dimensions and working in a single direction is straightforward. As highlighted in previous reports the current site was none of the above. The channel here widens considerably on a bend and it was necessary to work from both ends of the site towards the access/exit point.
The work area was complicated further by the requirement for a ‘soft bank’ (requiring considerable volumes of soil to be placed behind the hollow blocks) without having a haul road to provide access for plant. The answer to this conundrum was to drive a mini digger up to the top of the offside bank but this was only possible to do safely on bare earth so a gap in the liner had to be left for the digger to exit through the towpath gap once finished. The liner system, incorporating 4 layers of different products which inconveniently come in different widths, was folded back to varying degrees on both sides to expose bare earth, then folded back again once the digger had exited. Of course, being on a bend means the outside of the bend (offside bank) is longer than the inside (towpath) so various pieces of the different liners had to be cut to unusual sizes to cover any gaps with sufficient overlap. If that was not complicated enough a cut line in the channel blocks at a constant level was required on the offside in order to accommodate hollow blocks used to retain soil for the soft bank.
The end result looks effortlessly graceful. However hard you look you will not see the ‘join’, an incredible achievement given that each block is half a metre long, they were laid from each end meeting in the middle and the course had to incorporate a broad bend rather than a straight line. The final step was to close the gap in the towpath by building up the bank to full height. First, a sufficient quantity of blocks was stored in the channel bed before the access was eliminated.
As the channel works complete, the towpath is no longer required to provide access for some construction tasks and a final wear course of grit can be applied to produce the finished product. In total, 230 metres of previously constructed towpath was treated in this way.
Beside the channel and towpath work there was a whole host of activity relating to the next section. Next month the works compound will relocate further down the channel to Schoolhouse Bridge. Site preparation continued apace, and the compound now has a perimeter fence installed all the way round thanks to the volunteers from Colas Rail. Remaining stock of some materials was transported from the current compound to the new. Work continued to kit out the welfare cabin – a luxurious establishment compared to the current facility. Substantial vegetation clearance was undertaken northward from the new compound back towards the current site. The new compound will be used for works both north and south and time was also spent carefully reducing the level of temporary backfill beneath the bridge. This will allow larger plant to access the area through the bridge southwards.
