Michelle gives us this account of motivation overcoming adverse weather conditions at Lower Ynysmeudwy Locks today.

“On a rather ‘crisp’ but sunny morning eight of us headed up to Ynysmeudwy Locks to carry on the work of the previous week.  Drag forks were used to pull back the weeds and silt that had encroached into the water canal.  The work was concentrated on the ‘wharf area’ on the  far bank.  Gordon went off to ‘harvest’ a large bundle of willow saplings, which were then planted into the soft mud along the off bank.  It is hoped that these will readily root into the soft mud and later they can be woven together to form a living willow fence.

Today’s location is the site of a tramroad to canal trans-shipment wharf.  Sandstone slabs were brought down by ‘drams’ on the tramroad and lifted into the moored-up barges by means of a crane.  Mike, Paul and I followed the line of the tramroad up the hillside and found a ten foot wide ‘cutting’ built to ease the slope up the incline.  Mike cleaned off two slabs of sandstone that we found on the off bank slope.  These were ‘worked stone’ slabs that probably came down from the quarry,  but for some reason were not loaded onto a barge all those years ago (approx 170 years).

removing the reeds from the channel .

willow being planted

willow planted

clearing the channel

cleaning the sandstone block

muddy work.