by Peter Buck, LHCRT Engineering Director
Friday 8th March. At Fosseway Heath Nature Reserve and Wetlands and, with the help of a bus load of South Staffordshire College construction students on work experience, we placed the last infill concrete at the Falkland Road end of the south towpath wall. This is a significant milestone achievement as this 350 metres of wall, which includes the new wetland boardwalk section, supports the South Heritage Towpath Trail which now stretches for 800 metres to Fosseway Lane. All that remains is the completion of the brickwork towpath coping and stone surfacing to this last section of the south towpath over the wall and the completed south Heritage Towpath Trail can then be fully opened up for the community to benefit.
This is yet another massive achievement by the volunteers from the Trust who have toiled in all weathers, recently working seven days a week to make our vision of a Lichfield Canal a reality. And to any doubting and ill-informed individuals who still suggest the Lichfield Canal is merely an aspiration and will never happen, I suggest you join the many residents of, and visitors to, this fine City who are out of their armchairs and enjoying all the benefits of the completed sections of the Heritage Towpath Trail on the Lichfield Canal brought to you entirely by hard working volunteers.
We currently have 70+ students from different campuses of South Staffordshire College regularly getting hands-on work experience with us. This will soon rise to 100, as another group will be joining us. That will make five days a week of volunteering by students and a brilliant partnership which benefits everyone.
Meanwhile, at a meeting on Cappers Lane Bridge, High Speed Two Limited (HS2 Ltd) took possession of the first section of Lichfield Canal land which is owned by the Trust to start enabling works for the new high speed railway. The works will include a new Cappers Lane bridge and new diverted section of the Lichfield Canal which will pass under the railway viaduct when completed.
The land was handed over immediately to representatives from LMJV the Enabling Works contractor who will start work over the coming weeks.
Thursday 7th March at Fosseway Heath and we had close to 30 volunteers on site with the South Staffordshire College carpentry students and also multi-occupation construction students with us to hone their skills and gain real site work experience.
In what turned out to be pretty appalling cold, wet and windy weather the carpentry students applied themselves to repairing the south boundary fence and filling the verges to the adjacent south Heritage Towpath Trail near the wetland area with the help of our 3 tonne excavator. The multi-occ students with the help of our mechanically minded volunteers, coaxed the concrete mixer into action and mixed sand and cement, filled and placed sandbags along the top of Millington's Mound.
Our own Trust volunteers fired up the 5 tonne excavator and 3 tonne dumper to grade batter slopes to the canal channel near “the steps” and placing fill along the line of the north Nature Trail. And still that left a hardcore of our volunteers working on fixing racking and repairing equipment within our store. In spite of the appalling weather which did not relent, all the volunteers continued to graft well into the afternoon.
Wednesday 6th March and a good turn out of our own volunteers in the rain. And did it rain!
The lads took delivery of a load of concrete which was placed between the blockwork to the south towpath wall. Completion of this pour takes us up to, and releases, the brickwork courses and brickwork coping over a good 50 metre length. With the promise of a team of bricklaying students wanting work experience next week. the timing could not be better.
Most of our construction plant was in action today on trimming and reforming the batter slopes to the canal channel beyond “the steps” and a great job was done in the rain. I caught the lads bringing back the machines at the end of the day... spare a thought for Adrian who was on the dumper without any cab protecting him from the elements.
Tuesday 5th March and we are again on site at Fosseway Heath with half a dozen of our own volunteers. Most of the work was focussed around the South Towpath wall with Tony G and John placing and compacting sand backfill to the rear of the towpath wall, with Neil and Chris leading the work on a section of the top brickwork coping.
Adrian was on the Trust 5tonne excavator moving sand to form an access ramp from the main Falkland Road old lock 19 basin over the towpath wall for future material movements.
Monday 4th March and our Roger is leading a small team laying the recycled heritage bricks in the capping to the top edge of the South Towpath wall. This will allow us to backfill behind the towpath and complete the towpath surfacing and towpath verges which can then be seeded/ planted.
If you can lay bricks and would be happy to spare a few hour please come down and talk to us, we are on site throughout the week.
On Sunday our volunteers are out again working at Fosseway Heath with the weather much better than this time last year, when we were battling to complete the Big Lift in freezing conditions.
Hugh lead the volunteer team today raising the sandbag outer face of the canal wall facing Falklands Road. When completed up to Towpath level the external face will be seeded with our heathland meadow grass mix to encourage wildlife to this part of the canal. With the help of the South Staffs construction students next week we will see this topping out very soon.
Following the recent fabulous display of snowdrops at Fosseway Heath, I was pleased to see the daffodils planted earlier this year by the Trust Green and Grounds team were in bloom for St David’s Day.
It still amazes me the support we get from the local community, young and old who come to visit the Lichfield Canal and are always keen to learn of the restoration work of the Trust volunteers and the impact it has on the both the volunteers and how it benefits the community and the environment.
It's Saturday and we have a good turnout of our own volunteers at Fosseway.
Five of the Green and Grounds Team were out today helping to prepare for the seeding of the path verges, batter slopes and new lowland heathland areas we have created as part of the canal restoration. The seed we are using is a special grass mix for acid soils and contains 20% wildflower seeds to support bees, butterflies and other pollinators for a rich heathland habitat.
We caught Jeanne who acts as our “lengths-person” and normally walks the towpath to check for hazards and clear up the mess and litter some of our less considerate visitors leave behind them. Today she was emptying the Dog Bins which the Trust provides and services for our regular visitors to the canal. We get no help from our local authority in supplying this service.
The Trust bricklayers were again in action today constructing the new Towpath wall round the basin at Fosseway.
Saturday always brings out our plant maintenance team lead by Steve and today several of our very hard working pieces of plant were checked over, serviced and repaired where necessary. Harry has been helping Steve as his apprentice for some months now and is a key member of the plant maintenance team . Harry has been with the Trust for over 4 years and today was his last day until the Summer as he is concentrating on his studies for the next few weeks, and is planning to go to University in the Autumn to study Mechanical Engineering.
The Trust volunteer spoke to many walkers using the Heritage Towpath Trail along the Lichfield Canal throughout the day and provided them with information and updates on our progress.
Friday at Fosseway Heath has been a very busy day again.A dozen students from Queens Croft School were on site today as part of their regular weekly attendance to volunteer and gain work experience on the Lichfield Canal. Not only do these students walk to and from their City centre school, it is most impressive what these students achieve on every visit. Today was no exception and they set about backfilling to the rear of the newly rebuilt South Towpath wall.
Another new group of ten South Staffs College students attended site today for work experience and they set about further repair work to the south Heritage Towpath fence and filling to the towpath verges to create a mowing margin. These students will be returning again next week to continue this work.
Our own regular Trust volunteers continued with brick laying to the capping on the south Heritage Towpath Trail.
Three of our volunteer Trust Directors attended a meeting today with HS2 and LM JV their Enabling Works contractor to agree the first handover of canal owned land for the enabling works for the railway to commence
Thursday was typically a very busy day at Fosseway Heath on the Lichfield Canal. 25 construction students from South Staffs College attended site to volunteer and gain valuable work experience. These students were are studying carpentry and multi occupation construction skills and they set about moving sand and grading batter slopes near the Falkland Road site entrance and the second group started the repair work to the boundary fence to the rear of the new wetland area.
Meanwhile a dozen of our own regular volunteers (aged between 16 and 80plus) attended at Fosseway to work on
1. trimming the canal channel below Lock 18
2. placing and compacting stone on the new south Heritage Towpath
3. bricklaying to the new south Heritage Towpath capping
4. setting out for new hedgerows to be planted in the Spring
And a walking tour by Lichfield branch of U3A stopped by for a talk on their way along this section of the Lichfield Canal Heritage Towpath Trail.
Another great day of progress towards the restoration of the Lichfield Canal. Tomorrow we will be back on site again!