Saturday saw a record 82 members / volunteers mucking in to knock the Club surroundings into shape.

The winning team of Tarzan & Jane

alias Dave Preston and Lynda Gilbert.

The recent Dr Samuel Johnson 300th birthday celebrations included the 165-mile walk from Lichfield to London by Professor Peter Martin and Dr Nicholas Cambridge, dressed as Samuel Johnson and actor David Garrick, commemorating the journey that the pair made 272 years earlier. This involved a 10-day trek along the towpath to London, meeting up with civic leaders en route, before they were welcomed by the Lord Mayor of London at the capital's Guildhall.

The walk included walking the length of the Club moorings, arranged in conjunction with the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust, before joining the Coventry Canal towpath at Huddlesford Junction.

Lichfield Cruising Club will be the venue for the next SOW meeting, to be held on Saturday, 11th October. Doors will open at 10.30 for an 11.00 start. There will be a break for lunch around 1.00pm, with the afternoon session commencing about 2.00pm.

John Edmonds, Chair of the Inland Waterways Advisory Council, will set the tone for the meeting with a talk about the role of the IWAC, and how the 1999 paper, "Waterways for Tomorrow", has taken a central role in current and future government policy. There will also be oportunity to discuss current and future campaign strategy. Non-members are welcome.

The BW stoppage outside the Club has now ended. The work to the culvert was completed ahead of schedule, despite the start of the stoppage being delayed several times.

Initially the contractors had planned to start the stoppage on November 5th, but this conflicted with the date of November 12th published by BW in their stoppage list. The published date had to be honoured, and by the time the error was spotted, the contractor was unable to re-schedule the intallation of the temporary dams until the 16th. When the dam installation team started, however, they discovered that the planned location for the dams was too deep. The alternative dam locations chosen necessitated the moving of more of the boats off the main line moorings, which meant that the dams were not finally installed until November 20th. The photo here was taken during the first abortive attempt to install the dams in our oh-so-deep canal.

Despite these early difficulties, the contractors, Morrison Construction, have completed the bulk of the work to get the canal open again ahead of schedule, whilst at the same time causing minimum disruption to Club members. Well Done!

Those Club members who moor on the main line can now sleep easier at night in the knowledge that their boats are not likely to disappear "down the plughole", which undoubtedly would have been the case had the culvert failed!