The LANDSLIDE Cleanup has started by CRT on the Oxford Canal.
Vložit
- čas přidán 16. 02. 2024
- We noticed when passing the workboats moored about a mile from the landslide were on the move.
We thought we'd investigate what was happening........
If you've not watched the first 2 landslide videos then have a look here;
• LANDSLIDE! Hundreds of...
• Another Landslide! - f...
Buy me a coffee:
www.buymeacoffee.com/Narrowbo...
Thanks for keeping us all updated, looks hell of a job ❤❤❤
It does doesn’t it.
good see you cranking it thanks lee
Hope it gets cleared for the start of the cruising season . We always head out this way. Thank you for keeping us informed
I have info that they are trying to clear a narrow channel so craft can pass - no timescales but hopefully if the weather picks up a bit later might go down to see if there’s anyone to chat to.
Def looks like it will be a good while yet!! Presume even once they have cleared the canal, they will then need to be shoring up etc. Which may take longer than the clearing poss! Thanks for keeping us updated x
Definitely. Otherwise a lot won’t go down there if it’s not shored up.
Spoke to them this morning, anything from a month to 2 months depending on access to the farmers field & weather
Thanks very much for the update 👍🏻
@@nbspudley no worries. It’s 50m long and they don’t know what’s under the water yet . They have barges with equipment either end . All the material removed will have to go back to doggers lay-by to be taken away
Thanks for the update matey, fingers crossed
Hopefully middle of next week will pop to see you.
Thank you for the pictures and updates
Appreciating the updates. We were planning on heading down to the south that way after Great Haywood……mmmmm think we might have to go down the GU
Yeah, I think that’s a wise choice. Could be months. We were heading up the Ashby but not now so going Braunston way so might bump into you.
Landslips of similar proportions to the current one in the Brinklow Cutting have been commonplace, to my personal knowledge, for at least the last 60 years. Less so the further back in time you go, . . mainly because the trees were smaller back then, and so applied less rotating/slipping force to the areas of the cutting sides around the roots.
C&RT, and their equally clueless contractors, are making their expected customary long drawn out song and dance, and some very serious mistakes, over getting the canal open to boat traffic again following this relatively minor, and if you know how, comparatively easy to deal with landslip.
In the days when the North Oxford still saw regular commercial traffic, . . and was maintained and run by British Waterways, an organisation a bit more akin to a real navigation authority than the clowns in charge these days, . . a slip such as the present one in Brinklow Cutting would generally delay traffic for no more than around half a day at most.
There's a right way and a wrong way to deal with slips like this present one in the Brinklow Cutting. A lot of useful lessons in doing it the right way were learned from mistakes made with the Saddington Slip many years earlier, . . which, going from what I recall being told, from the early 1960's through to the early 1970's, by other working and ex-boatmen, BWB lengthsmen, other British Waterways company men, the two BWB Section/Length Foremen, and BWB's Leicester Section Inspector, Matt Mortimer, . . first began causing really serious recurring problems in the late 1930's or early 1940's.
Removing too much slip material/spoil from the navigation channel at the site of a landslip too soon after the slip, combined with also removing the main trunks and root systems from where they all finish up immediately after a slip, is a really big mistake, . . and almost invariably leads to immediate, and usually continuous, further slippage and movement.
The weight/mass of the main parts of the fallen trees must, initially, be repositioned only as much as necessary, ie. only what is needed in order to open up a navigation channel past the slip site of minimal width and depth. Leaving as much as possible of the slip material/spoil, . . plus most of the weight/bulk of the fallen trees, all in situ at first has the effect of allowing the slip to stabilize itself to the greatest possible extent, . . whilst navigation resumes via a short length of minimal depth/width channel through the slip site.
This way of dealing with slips such as this leaves the whole site/area still in a mess that all needs clearing up afterwards, . . but it works, it's practical, it's proven and above all, it's safe, both for those working on site, and the boats and the people aboard passing through after re-opening, . . and it gets the navigation open again in a matter of hours. The cutting up and removal of the trees already done in Brinklow Cutting is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. All that has been achieved by what's been done so far, and what is proposed next, is to turn the possibility of further slippage at the same spot into what amounts to almost an absolute certainty.
What should, and what WOULD, be happening under a responsible and competent navigation authority, is that the navigation is re-opened by the means described above, with appropriate signage clearly warning of the serious ground instability throughout the whole length of the cutting, . . and the consequential very high risk of further similar slips occuring, at ANY time and without ANY warning. An urgent program of work to reduce or eliminate the massive destabilizing forces from the trees on the sides of the cutting by means of extensive lopping, or removal of all the largest/heaviest overhanging trees along the whole length of the cutting, MUST then commence as a matter of urgency, and without any delay whatsoever.
Pleasure boaters who use, have used, or intend to use the North Oxford in the future should NOT be under any illusions. Years of joint BWB/C&RT neglect of essential tree maintenance, lopping, and growth/size control, has left Brinklow Cutting in a very dangerous state, . . along its entire length. With the high number of neglected and now very much oversized, much too weighty, overhanging trees, along the length of the cutting on both sides of the canal, and the permanently wet unstable ground they're all standing and growing in, . . it is potentially a very dangerous place to be, whether walking through or boating through, . . irrespective of how much recent rainfall there may or may not have been.
If nothing is done about all the oversized, overhanging trees that haven't yet fallen across the cutting, but could do without warning at any time, they're just going to keep coming down, . . and bringing more sizeable, potentially very dangerous, landslips full of yet more honking great overgrown trees down with them, . . with ever increasing regularity !
The navigation should have been re-opened to boat traffic in the way described above, . . moving and clearing the absolute minimum of slip material and tree debris from only the navigation channel itself. Everything on the towpath should have been left temporarily
undisturbed, . . left to settle and naturally stabilise itself, to whatever extent it can, under the influence of gravity and its own bulk/mass and weight.
Top priority MUST then be given over IMMEDIATELY to - again, as described above - lopping and/or felling, as necessary, all of those very much oversized, much too weighty, overhanging trees, along the length of the cutting on both sides of the canal. They are all standing and growing in permanently wet unstable ground, and any or all of them could start moving at any time, without warning, triggering more landslips when they do.
Put simply and plainly, . . C&RT are getting this very wrong, . . top priority should, and must, be the prevention of further landslips, . . NOT the cosmetic clearing and tidying up of this one, . . or re-opening the towpath, . . or dredging the navigation channel back to its full width and depth.
They'll definitely want the towpath cleared ASAP 🤣
Thanks for the update. I'm pretty sure we've made the correct decision to go via Birmingham.
Agreed. This, I think is going to be a huge job.
Not sure where you are headed but lots of locks shut in Brum because of HS2 and there's a small landslide in Knowle as well.
I had a look at the landslide four weeks ago.
I went back yesterday and nothing had changed….
Oh dear. S’pose it could be down to the weather - wet & wind not going to help.
I’m not too far away, I’ll nip down in another month and check for any progress.👍
I'm riveted....
I went down to the bridge and had a look today, Sunday 18th, about half past 2. Couldn't see much so it's great to see this....
I wonder why they wouldn't scatter the wood-chippings back in to the bank where it came from?
Much easier, I'd have thought, from a logistics point of view surely?
There may be a good reason why that's not done.
Can anyone enlighten us?🤔
🙄
🧐
👍
I don’t know Phil, maybe don’t want to add to the embankment until it’s all shored up 🤷🏻♂️
The bank is very steep and they would just slip back down
How things change over the years, . . and NOT for the better ! What follows below tells of the events of one Winter morning long ago. It's a brief passage taken from recent oddments of notes and rough drafts of a book that a former working boatman is reluctantly being persuaded, . . more like badgered really, . . into writing by the rapidly dwindling number of the people still around who knew and remember him from back then.
Note the length of time it took to re-open the canal to navigation after that serious slip back in Winter 1969, . . just under 5 hours, . . in comparison with the interminable time-wasting farting about that goes on nowadays !
__________________________________________________
Early one Winter morning in 1969, two pairs of boats left Sutton's (Stop) heading South. Both pairs had loaded the previous day, . . Willow Wren CTS's 'Nuneaton' & 'Ara' from Newdigate Colliery (up the arm by Bedworth Hill Bridge) for Colne Valley Works, and Blue Line Canal Carriers sub-contracted pair 'Jaguar' & 'Achilles' from Baddesley Colliery (Atherstone) for Kearley & Tonge's jam and cooked meats factory at Southall (known colloquiallly around the 'cut' as the Jam Hole). They got as far as Brinklow Cutting and found the canal blocked a few hundred yards from Brinklow Road Bridge (No.34) with fallen trees and earth that had slipped into the canal down the outside (offside in today's canal speak) bank during the night.
The material from the slip, earth and assorted smallish stones, was a bit over halfway across the width of the canal, . . the upper main branches of the trees were all the way across, and over the towpath.
With no help immediately available from BW's Hilmorton Yard - the time was still only around 0645 hrs - we got to work with the two 'motors' using the 'snubbers' (the boat's length heavy tow ropes used round long pounds) snatching the upper branches of the trees from over the towpath, dragging and swinging them as far as we could round and back toward the outside bank of the cutting in the direction of Stretton Stop, . . and someone, I think it was probably George Wain's son, John, ('Nuneaton' & 'Ara') walked up into Brinklow to find a phone box and ring Hilmorton Yard.
The call to Hilmorton soon brought Length Foreman, Joe Hogg, and brickie, George Russell, with a couple of bow saws. Working off the top planks from both motors slung between the boats and the towpath, and the boats and the tree branches, we cleared as wide a gap as we could between the fallen trees and the towpath.
Then with both motors working hard ahead and back together - stem fender of one motor lashed tight up against the tip-cats (stern fenders) on the other one - 'Jaguar' and 'Nuneaton' were both forced through the gap created between the towpath and the fallen trees, and then the buttys, 'Ara' and 'Achilles', were dragged through too. Both pairs were through and clear of the slip and on their way again by just before 1100 hours.
Once both pairs of loaded boats had forced their way past the landslip and opened up a boat-sized channel through the mud and slip spoil, it was relatively easy for others to get past the slip too. The remaining branches, trunks of trees, and the spoil in the canal from the slip, were all cleared away over the next few weeks, . . but all in all, it only took about five hours to re-open the navigation after the slip was first discovered.
Wow! First of all thanks for watching & taking the time to reply. Secondly that’s amazing. & definitely the longest comment we’ve ever had. You can really picture this in your minds eye having used the cutting so many times & standing next to the current slip. Which book is it please? Is it available to buy? If it’s ok with you I might do a CZcams short on it. 👍🏻
Hello spudley,
Thanks for the reply. The book isn't finished yet, . . not absolute sure it ever will be, . . it's taken a lot of badgering and pressure to persuade me to go as far as I have with it to date.
There's another lengthy reply for you on the balls-up that's being made of re-opening the North Oxford to navigation at the Brinklow Slip if you'd like it included in the Comments. You're welcome to make whatever and as much use of it as you wish, including elsewhere other than your CZcams channel if that would be of further interest or help.
Regards, Tony Dunkley.
@TonyDunkley-ye2ov thanks. I’ll read the other comments now. If you’d like to email me;
boatersnarrow@gmail.com I’d like to converse more about the book etc but it’s only if you wish. 👍🏻