right we've been told to uh to bring helmet
and uh hi Vis for today's adventure chip in anytime you want okay I will
today is a bit of a first for me we're actually um digging up a canal say we
although I think this is more for um caving activities nevertheless it's a
helmet apparently we're gonna need it and you can just imagine the muscles on the
uh the boater that use this [Music] we have two guides and then we're gonna meet the team
a mile down the canal that way in the meantime it's Welly up
[Music]
so you join me on the Stroud water navigation now we're looking for a
group of people that I didn't know existed and what they do I didn't
know existed we'll come to that shortly but first of all just want to show you
what I can see ahead of me now which is a rather beautiful structure and the Stroud
navigation recently restored stroud navigation weaves its way through it take a look at that
So I parked up here near blunder lock ready to meet up with Matt our goal was to take a
look at Westfield lock and all the activity which is going on there right now now take
a look at this image of Westfield lock from a few years back courtesy of Cotswold canals in
pictures now keep this image in mind as we work our way through the rest of this video on our way
down to Westfield lock we were treated to an image of what Westfield lock might look like
very soon this is Pike lock the scaffolded and frankly humongous lock sat waiting for vessels
of all shapes and sizes to Grace its lock Gates once again one more lock to look at and again
perhaps the next step in the restoration process Matt what is this one called dock Lock Dock lock
wonderful we're in the missing mile so of the eight miles of the stroll water navigation
they've only got a mile to go which is just brilliant because we see a lot of projects where
they have clearly got a lot more than a mile to go so this is good news [Music]
I'm John Pontefract I'm the volunteer manager for the Cotswold canals connected project which is the
overall partnership consisting of possible canals for us being the most well-known Stroud District
Council Bluffs County Council the canal and River trust with assistance from Waterway Recovery Group
as we've got today and the inland waterways Association so this is Westfield lock and that
was a lot of organizations John just mentioned I'll list them all with a link in the description
below to this video so exactly where are we and what is going to happen here to this lock
this is a lock known as Westfield lock which was the bottom lock of five of the eastington
flight this Lot Westfield lock is going to be known in future as John Robinson lock
thanks to a a very generous bequest from the Robinson family in memory of John Robinson
in actual fact we'll be building a new lock just around the corner this way
um which will be known as Westfield New lot so some of the other locks that we've
already seen today and sum up on the Thames and seven Canal survived but Westfield lock
didn't why exactly is that the lock was filled in as part of the motorway construction the M5
construction a new route for the oldbury brook carved through the head end of the
lock which took away some of the uh structure so above the sill we've got a complete lock on
the left-hand Northern side but we're missing the top gate recess on the the southern side
so how exactly do you dig up a lock is it as easy as rocking up with a couple of diggers
well clearly not and the work we're doing at the moment is removing all of the infill
so that we can assess the structure we knew we'd lost about the top meter of brickwork
and all the coping stones and we thought the coping Stones were being robbed and taken
elsewhere so we were pleasantly surprised as we started digging we started pulling
out these stones and I reckon about 90 of them are still here so we're looking good for that
the work should be when we've got all the infill out scaffolding out the lock getting
to the brickwork and just removing any loose and damaged bricks and then starting to rebuild in
Brick until we get up to the level where we put the stones back on which sounds simple but [Music]
time was getting on it was nearly lunch and we noticed not a cup of tea in sight
with these volunteers until of course this man turned up with some good news
[Music]
[Music] so John had previously mentioned a brook cutting right across the East End of the lock
I wonder if he could tell us a bit more about this and how they're going to deal with this
in repairing and restoring that end of the actual lock itself so the the brook originally came into
the canal when they first built the canal of the 1780s they they brought it into the canal
to supply extra water and then it went out via a large rear structure over on the uh the other
side of the canal when they built the motorway they terminated The Canal at that point and they
didn't want to fill a a truncated canal with the water from the oldbury brook so they carved
it through the top end of the lock and a new route down to the river um we've got to deal
with that by somehow culverting the brook and they're building an embankment to effectively
create an aqueduct over the top of it which will be an extension of the lock so we can
build in the missing parts of the the lock the the lock gate structure on this southern side
and then probably in culverts in concrete or pile through to join into the canal on the other side
I'm always fascinated by what might be found if you were to dig up an abandoned Canal lock
so I asked if any Treasures had come to light so far we found bits of the the old lock Gates bits
of Timber we're not really holding on to those although we know where they are yeah over there
we have um the handrail from the top of one of the lock Gates it's a little bit bent now
because the Digger is a little bit uh brutal so the most pleasing find is this an original
windlass uh wrought iron quite a bit larger than the modern day windlass that a boater would carry
and you can just imagine the muscles on the uh the boater that use this so we mentioned there was a
mile left to cut of this canal how easy will that be to do and how will the M5 affect this
so we can't follow the uh the original route goes right the way through or right the way
under Junction 13 of the M5 so we've got to take an alternative route and use an
existing Motorway Crossing where the M5 crosses the river through and so we're
going to share the channel of the bridge underneath the motorway so that involves
a diversion just the other side of this bridge immediately after this lock John
Robinson lock there will be a new Westfield lock Westfield new lock which will take the
the water level down to a level which will get boats underneath the soffit of the motorway
the volunteer group here is remarkable we're new to Canal restoration so it was a surprise
to learn that people in Groups travel all over to undertake projects which need doing
so this year we're hoping to run three consecutive week-long camps in July and
we should be able to you know break the back of the restoration of this particular lock [Music]
so all sort of involvement by volunteers is really coordinated through the Cotswold canals
trust so it's worth looking at uh the um the the CCT website they have a spin-off website which
is their restoration blog which has stories about this sort of thing lock restoration but also about
vessels that we've got we've got our own dredger Fleet our own tank Fleet and so on
um and some quirky stories as well obviously your own filming and other filming of the work
we're doing we're always after volunteers they can come and join in we have lots of
volunteering going on during the week at weekends who tend to be visiting groups
like this yeah and yeah or they can donate I mean that's always useful you know when
you've never got enough money so despite you being fully funded prices are going up and
um you know requests like John Robinson bequest are fantastic they help us enormously
well huge thanks to John and all the volunteers today who've made that possible I'll click on
all their links I'll click on the links you'll click on all the links in the doobly-doo below
and if you want to help out if you want to be involved with a huge project like
that you certainly can because there's a lot of different skills that are required um in
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Sunday where did Friday come from [Music]