Welcome to The Oriel Number 12.

The big news from Wessex Waterways is that we have made a real start on the repairs to Oriel Bridge, within Park Farm at Foxham. The OS Grid reference is ST 9781 7802, What3Words location is shunning.still.rely, and there is an established arrangement for permissive public access along the towpath northwards from Foxham Lock or, walk up the hill from the road along public footpath number CMAL12 to where it crosses the canal and then head southwards.

We were pleased to welcome a group of volunteers from Waterway Recovery Group Bit-in-the-Middle for a weekend in September. They stayed overnight at Christian Malford Village Hall and deployed en-mass on the Saturday morning ready to do some serious work on some hard concrete. Photos of progress appear below.

We have gathered information about costs and volumes of materials to produce a total estimate of the costs to complete the work required at Oriel Bridge. The total is not big – about £16,000 – but there isn’t that much in the Wessex bank account right now. We have funds we can draw on for our first big purchase which is some high-specification paint to cover the steel beams (after we’ve cleaned the rust off) so that they can be reused. The new arrangement will carry the load of the traffic (cattle, people, tractor and trailer, etc) for many decades into the future and won’t damage the supporting abutments.

The downhill abutment has some serious cracks to demonstrate why we need to rebuild.

Your opportunity if you wish to contribute towards this is in September when you can sponsor Luke doing the Thames Bridges Trek (again). This involves 16 miles (25 km) of walking in Central London, crossing the River Thames on 16 bridges starting with Putney Bridge and finishing with Tower Bridge.

As evidence of Luke being able to complete this walk, last year, there’s a photo below of him with his 2024 Finisher’s T-shirt.

Timber from the vandalised deck of Elephant Bridge – Luggit in use at Park Farm, Foxham

Switching back to the events of the months since The Oriel Number 11:

Matt, our Treasurer and Trustee, has completed the accounts section for our Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2025. The AGM will be arranged for 11 November at 7pm and will be held on Zoom. The Annual Report will be sent out to members by email in the next few days, along with the Zoom link and joining instructions for the meeting. The instructions will also include details of how to join using a push-button telephone.

The Oriel Number Eleven mentioned that we have gained a skilled volunteer who is now maintaining our Facebook presence. He has been to some work parties recently to help remove concrete and brickwork from the deck of Oriel Bridge. Photos of recent work appear more quickly on our Facebook site if you want to see progress.

A quick reminder if you have material that you want to share with others via our Facebook site, please go to https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569543905848

In recent months there’s not been much rain so the rate of the growth of the grass on the tow-paths has slowed dramatically. That’s meant fewer hours spent with the mowers and much more work with hammer drills at Oriel Bridge. We did get a phone call from Rob who is the farmer at Elm Farm about his cattle not wanting to cross the wooden deck of Elm Farm Lift Bridge. As an experiment to reduce the noise of hooves on timber planks we’ve fitted artificial grass on it. Rob will let us know how the cows respond to this when he next needs to move them over the canal.

Luke spent some time with car and the Wessex Waterways trailer moving kit from our containers (‘Ant’ and ‘Dec’) at Dauntsey Lock to new storage locations at Park Farm. The orange motorised wheelbarrow ‘Luggit’ was funded by the Bradenstoke Solar Farm Community Benefit Fund for use at Oriel Bridge, so a suitable secure garage area was needed. We are grateful to Farmer Mike for finding the space we needed. Luggit’s first significant task was a trip to the far northern end of the canal within Park Farm to collect the remaining ballast and timber from where Gordon’s team had stored their materials when working on the Elephant Spillway.

A single trip with Luggit was sufficient to move all that spare material, and no ruts were left on the towpath. We’ve now got only one item in that area, Rachael’s dumper, which is taking a bit more effort to move. We’ve done work it – including a new wiring loom, new ignition switch, new battery and re-built starter motor. When we’d fitted all that and connected it all up, all was good except that the cog on the end of the starter didn’t engage with the flywheel of the engine. All those parts have now been taken away for Rachael’s helpful friends at a garage in Lyneham to do some investigation and diagnosis work.

Progress on Oriel Bridge