Another Tuesday, another morning of graft for our excellent team of volunteers, working mostly out of the Canal Centre in Hebron Road again this week.

Lance, Phil, Rowan, Chris M, Gareth and our new volunteer Tom took on our dirtiest routine job, pulling some of the massive growth of weed from the cut. The stretch between Port John bridge and the aqueduct hasn’t been tackled since the spring and was in need of much TLC. It’s messy, physical work but the gang soon had piles of greenery on the towpath to be barrowed away. They made a big improvement, but there’s much more to do. Luckily some of the weed will start to die back naturally as the autumn comes upon us. John Grav made good use of his canoe to get further out into the cut to pull reeds that either couldn’t be reached from the towpath, or which slide through the tines of our rakes thrown from the bank. Or was it just an excuse for a paddle?

Martin was back in the Hebron Road wild border, where he cleared some of the fennel plants, cut the buddleia right back and planted a helianthus There’s now a much clearer view of our lovely mural! He also sowed some honesty seeds in the garden, which is looking so attractive and a lot more weed-free.

He’d walked past the buried lock site during the morning and taken a few photos of the work going on there. The contractors were busy removing the large redundant culvert pipe from the course of the buried canal, which was then stacked in St Benedict’s church car park before disposal. We continue to be very grateful to the church for their constant support.

Bob continued his work on the big boat at Coed Gwilym Park, this time painting the internal surfaces in a lovely shade of battleship grey! Actually it looked very good and when he’s done a second coat, there will be little left to do before we can put it back in the water. Alan and Duncan were at the park too, doing some installation work at the canoe store.

We all met up at the Canal Centre for tea and coffee, and fabulous cakes and sandwiches provided this week by Annette. It was good to see her again after some time away. Revitalised, we finished off the various jobs in the warm sunshine by lunchtime, to cap off another pleasant and successful shift