It’s what canals were built for!
by:Myron
Shane and Joe Dickinson are two lovely people who are getting on quite well with the challenge of renovating The Lock Keepers Cottage at Ryford locks. This is a delightful old cottage, full of character and charm with the added benefit of no road access for about half a mile. Idyllic, until you want to shift about ten tonnes of scaffolding on site. Who do you call, the CCT Boat Team of course. It has to be said, that due to the cavalier attitude scaffolding companies have to their customers, that this job has had a couple of false starts.
But the scaffolding arrived this morning at Ryford bridge, and great delight was taken in watching a crew of blokes load it onto Delilah. Their lateness and complete incomprehension of the complications of moving this stuff up the canal made our old Tony smirk, bringing back humorous anecdotes relating to those who load boats as opposed to those who drive them. There was so much of the stuff that the scaffolding company had to organise a second load. The crew of Margaret left them to it for a couple of hours and went off on a site seeing tour to the Ocean.
Eventually a loaded barge was pushed up the cut to the landing stage below the double locks. Good drinking time was being lost at this point, so they left them to it and returned to base. We shall return on Monday to retrieve our barge and deliver it to Upper Mills for a load of piles that the Piling Gang plan to fix the leak at Ebley with once they have finished at Wallbridge Lower.
Thanks to John Sirett for the pictures.