Richard’s Wey June 2015

Published on: 18 Jun, 2015
Updated on: 18 Jun, 2015

The latest report from Richard Cant, the Stoke lengthman on the River Wey Navigations

I am pleased to say that I was very happy with how the Stoke length looked for the busy first May bank holiday weekend.

The locks were painted, the grass was mown and the visitor moorings for boats to moor up on were freshly strimmed.

It seemed as well that all the boaters were keen to enjoy the weather and the picturesque river, as for the first time this year the river felt truly busy and alive. There is nothing better than a busy weekend on the river and the towpath, as it makes all the hard work feel worthwhile.

Of course at this time of year you only have to turn your back for a second and the grass seems to have grown, so once things had quietened down after the bank holiday I was soon back to vegetation management.

As well as mowing the locksides I also had to mow the towpath with the ride on mower and strim the long vegetation on both the front and back edge of the towpath. This stops the nettles and other plants from blocking the towpath while maintaining a bank of vegetation for insects and animals.

I also finished the last of this year’s painting programme in May, which involved scraping down and re-painting the large ‘horse bridge’ at Stoke Lock.

Local Marks & Spencer staff members volunteered to help do a litter pick along the Wey Navigation in Guildford as part of the national Big Beach and Waterways Clean-up event.

Thankfully, I had a lot of help from the Wey Navigation Conservation Volunteers who got the bridge prepped in record time, and even managed to apply a coat of paint in-between the rain showers!

Of course, this isn’t ideal so we did have to do a bit of touching up when we had more favourable weather, but a big thank you to everyone who helped out as I couldn’t have imagined doing it without you.

Loosely staying on the theme of horses, we did have an incident this month of a horse getting stuck on Old Bucks weir near Burpham.

The horse was on Burpham Court Farm land and had tried to cross the weir into another field, but unfortunately got stuck on the access bridge.

After getting called out to assist we soon realised that we weren’t going to be a lot of help, so stepped back and watched as the professionals (fire and rescue service, RSPCA and a local vet) set to sedating and rescuing the very stressed horse. Thankfully the horse suffered no major injuries and made a swift recovery.

As you can probably tell May was a very busy month and, as well as all the above, I have; organised a mass litter pick with Marks & Spencer volunteers, repaired noticeboards at Stoke Lock, Triggs Lock and Send, cleaned vegetation from the lock gates, sprayed the Japanese knotweed and ragwort as part of our ongoing conservation work, checked licences on boats along the river and hedge trimmed the access track to Stoke Lock. Phew!

Richard Cant

07786 703832.

richard.cant@nationaltrust.org.uk

www.facebook.com/RiverWey