Sorry for missing an October edition of this blog. So, at this late date, better to combine the two months offerings into one.
At the end of September, the sandbag wall alongside the railway embankment was nearly completed.
We won!! The Heart of England 'Britain in Bloom' competition. In the category of 'Small City' the gold award was presented, this month, to Lichfield for 2018. The presentation was attended by Peter and Jean Buck who represented the Trust.
A huge thanks to all who made this possible.
August is a month of holiday taking. And for those who work down at our Fosseway site there are no exceptions. And yet in spite of holidays, work at the Fosseway site progressed, perhaps not as fast as normal, but still progressed at a good rate.
It's 5 months since the last Summerhill Report. This is primarily due to the gang being asked to help out at Gallows Wharf, which absorbed a lot of time. The work mainly involved bricklaying on the wharf wall, construction of edging for the flowerbeds...
Gallows Wharf, have you been there and seen it recently? Have you seen the replica 70 ft. narrow boat 'Willow Rose' moored along the Tamworth Road.?
The restoration of the Fosseway length of the canal continues to proceed at speed. To express the progress in words or pictures does not do justice to the amount of work and effort put in by the volunteers.
The weather turned on us this month. In my April Blog I was looking forward to an improvement in the weather now that May was upon us. In all fairness it hadn't been all that bad a Spring.
It has occurred to me that when I have written my monthly blogs about what has been achieved at the sites we are working at, that I have seldom made much comment about the tremendous contribution that all our volunteers make.
A great restoration effort by the Trust volunteers at Gallows Wharf on the Lichfield Canal over the last week. The infilled canal has been excavated down to ?water level? to provide a working platform for the re building of a section of the Historic Gallows Wharf.
With little to report on any progress on the length of canal from Huddlesford through to London Road, I have added, to this report, progress along the stretch known as Fosseway.
One job has dominated the first three months of 2018, namely continuation of bricklaying on the Sand Wharf. This has been delayed by the terrible weather, three days of work were lost due to freezing conditions and heavy rain.
Early in February a new friend arrived on the Fosseway Heath section of the Lichfield Canal in the form of a shiny new EZ80 8 tonne Excavator from Wacker Neuson based at Stafford.
A very enthusiastic Network Rail Projects team of over 30 volunteers lead by David, Peter, Bob, Roger and Tony G. braved the extreme cold weather brought by the Mini beast from the East on 19th March to move the Lichfield Canal restoration at Fosseway Heath forward.
In my January work party blog, I explained that the excavation of the pit at the Darnford Moors site, adjacent to the Golf Club House, had taken up most of our time and effort.
The New Year started by finishing off the excavations at the Darnford Moors site, adjacent to Darnford Lane. We also completed the provision of the hard-standing area at this site.