A very hot day saw a fantastic turnout of volunteers who toiled under the unforgiving sun in the Buried Lock site, along the canal and in Coed Gwilym Park. But the main business of the day was a filming session for S4C Prynhawn Da. The team filmed the volunteers hard at work and then interviewed John Grav, Gareth Richards and Leanne Walker. In the first photo, John Grav keeps an eye on Alan T who takes a photo of the S4C cameraman who has JOhn in close up. JOhn looks at something out of shot. The cameraman’s mate adopts a Pilates one leg flamingo stance and thinks about lunch. The second shows the interviews underway. Leanne was interviewed as a canal user. She made reference to her groups paddle-boarding, plus volunteering opportunities for youngsters such as Rhys and his mates.

Amidst the ‘celebrity’ circus of the Prynhawn Da visit, the volunteers continued with their equally important canal tasks. The dry stone walling of the Buried Lock Site by-wash has taken many a week but still the hard core of Sharon, Duncan and Andrew turn up every week, and stick to their task.

Alan T placed a cage of rebar in the pillar to take the stop-planks in the dry dock and then edged the top with good stone. The void will later be filled with concrete.

Gordon added more facing stone to the wing walls at the downstream end of the dry dock.

Martin continued to work on the garden, although the searing heat and baked soil meant that some plants had to be set aside in the shade until next week.

Gareth and Andy trundled last week’s weed back to the compost heap. Alan W pulled out more weed faster than it could be barrowed away, thanks in no small part to Gordon’s new, light-weight throw fork.

In Coed Gwilym Park, Dave and Moira tended to the garden, that is looking an absolute picture.

The vols set out information about the Society and our canoe & kayak hire, taking time to giggle over a mystery photo. Gwyn called in to discuss matters of state with Mike.

Tea was taken with cakes baked by Gill [with Chris having recovered after the confusion caused entirely by Andy!]. We were very pleased to see so many of our chums from Whitethorns who hopefully will be included in the S4C piece.

A very, very hot day saw the volunteers wilting in the heat {so much so that one of us [who shall remain nameless to spare his blushes] forgot his rucksack. It was retrieved and taken to the Trustees Meeting in the evening, where he managed to forget it again!} but the sunshine gave a very good background for the filming. Look out for us next week on Prynhawn Da.