Our planned activity day with the pupils from St. Jospeh’s School had, regrettably, to be cancelled due to the poor weather. Undaunted, we carried on clearing the Canadian Pond Weed from the northern end of the old Highways Depot upwards. When completed this will mean the canoes will be able to paddle downstream from Coed Gwilym Park instead of just heading towards Trebanos. We wheelbarrowed the heaps from last week’s efforts down to the depot to be collected by CRT, but this week’s heaps we left for the many invertebrates to get back in the canal. At the end of day the channel was clear at last. We will be hosting the pupils of Cwmtawe School tomoorow at the canoe store so they will have a little more water to use.

We were also delighted to welcome Andrew Denny, the assistant editor of ‘Waterways World’, to the Swansea Canal. He was most interested in all we were doing, particularly the use of Aspen Rakes to clear the canal weed. Alan is our Aspen Rakemeister so Andrew took this one of Alan performing his famous upward extraction manoeuvre. At the same time I got a shot of Andrew taking the photograph.

Andrew’s article will appear in the September edition of ‘Waterways World’. We thank him for his interest in all aspects of our canal.