Please don’t forget that there is a club meeting next Monday April 20th at 19:30 at the Punchbowl.
The agenda is:
1. Funding for the shed (including fundraising)
2. Programme for summer 2009
We were up at QH last night and there is security fencing all around the Big Green Shed with a skip full of dirt and rubble stacked next to it. Clearly something is happening although we’re not quite sure what yet.
If anyone (Phil, Mike, Bob ?) knows what the current schedule is then just comment on the post. (click on the “No Comments” link below)
Last weekend saw our first Saturday morning operation out of our new (temporary) home in the “kayak village”. This is a set of shipping containers and a portacabin changing room which have been set up in the BW car park while the shed is being redeveloped.
Important Note If you are a keyholder and letting yourself in and out of the carpark, PLEASE make sure that when you lock the carpark gates that you link the padlocks together - there are two padlocks, one of ours and one of British Waterways, so if we lock the chain with the two padlocks locked to each-other then EITHER of us can undo the gate.
While we were finishing off last weekend I took some photos of our new and old homes if anyone is interested.
The kayak village from the road
Our new changing rooms (despite reasoned and logical protest the girls still got the big one with the boys stuffed into the tiny bit at the end)
Storage for K2s, composites, and plastic boats with most of the racing boatts temporarily stored offsite or in the gallery.
When you look at the shed now that we’ve taken out all our clutter (and the partition walls) you begin to understand how big it really is. here you can see the top shed empty of boats and racking, what used to be the changing rooms, and the main bottom boat shed.
Lots of people turned out yesterday to empty the shed. Dave, Joe and Giles built some excellent racking for boats, paddles and BAs in the containers of kayak village and we moved almost all of the boats and kit into them. It all looks amazingly tidy - I wonder how long we can keep it like that.
The boats for night training are now tidied into the mill - suspended from the ceiling in a series of rope ladders thanks to Phil and Ben.
The shed is now completely empty. As in, completely. Even the dry walls have gone - thanks to Flo. She may be wee but she’s very handy with a large mallet.
The biggest surprise for those of us who have only joined the club in the last few years was a small excavation into industrial archaeology. Led by Nigel who spotted a partial brick arch at the back of the slalom shed behind a large sheet of timber, he hacked the wood away to reveal a tunnel under the road into the mill. A small advanced party of party of pot holers was formed - Marcus, Matt, Derek and Deb. The tunnel goes under the road and contains train tracks for easy transit of materials from the mill to the wharf. The back half of the tunnel is about 5′ high - but the front half is substantially lower. Unusually it was the short arse who banged her head. The excavation proved fruitful and resulted in the recovery of some old bottles a tin jug and a collection of bones.
Once we’d finished we retired to the pub to recover. It was warm and had beer. It was good.
Oh, and for anyone who is concerned, Bertie the ferret polecat from Narrowboat Flyagaric has been found and is back home on the boat.
There will be no paddling on Saturday due to the GREAT SHED CLEAR OUT.
Work on the new shed is imminent and we need to move boats, kit, fridge freezers, dining room suites etc out of the shed so the contractors can start work. They won’t start whilst there is ANYTHING left in the shed.
All help would be much appreciated in carrying stuff to the new containers and loading trailers/vehicles to go to Walford for off-site storage and to the tip.
If we can’t empty the shed this weekend, we don’t get a new one. Since the old one is falling down, its kind of important. Please come and help!
As you may have noticed the shed has new padlocks. Keys are in the process of being distributed to all the nominated keyholders (thank you Joe).
Can we just remind people that if you’re the last keyholder to leave it’s your responsibility to ensure that all the padlocks are secure. This includes the one on the toilet - there have been a couple of instances of the combination lock for the toilet “going missing” recently which, we assume, is due to it being left unfastened. Not only does this mean that we need to replace the padlock, it also means that the toilet gets used by boaters & fishermen who, to be honest, leave it in an unpleasant state.