November 2004 saw the Forestry Team in attendance at the Bonfire Bash - the annual WRG reunion. This year the "bash" was held on the Grantham Canal near Nottingham. Approximately 180 volunteers turned out for the weekend, including many of the local WRG groups.
The canal totals 33 miles, much of which remains in water. The canal is in the ownership of British Waterways and is classed as a remainder waterway. The local canal society are ambitious for the restoration of the Grantham Canal, and plans certainly seem thorough.
The stretch we were working on was somewhat overgrown with young willows and on the non-towpath side a number of mature crack willows were beginning to live up to their reputation with large limbs having partially snapped, remaining hung over the canal.
The lion's share of the volunteer work involved removing these young willows, transporting them via landrover and
trailer to a chipper based at one end of the stretch of towpath and then removing the roots with tirfor winch or with
mattocks.
Working at the other end of the towpath, WRG Forestry were dealing with some of the larger trees, windblown limbs
and trees and removing the partially torn away limbs on the offside of the canal.
At the start of the weekend we had a visit from the BW ecologist, and talked through the need to maintain habitats for wildlife, mainly insects. Although a bat survey on this stretch of canal has remained inconclusive, care was taken to retain any standing timber which was perceived to have attributes which may later provide refuge for any potential bat populations in the area.
Clive Alderman having committed to a future NPTC course on the chainsaw, he was taking the opportunity of a three day weekend to pick up some of the basic information about the safety checks, pre-start checks and starting procedure for the chainsaw. His dog, Molly under the watchful eye of Sue Webster was also very interested in proceedings.