On Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:29 PM [GMT+1=CET], Sue Burchett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Considering at least two list members have been on site for awhile it > has been very quiet about Festival happenings. How are things going > there? Actually there are several of us here. Me, Glen, Guy & Connie, Dave G & Anne Coleman. to name just those I've been with this evening. The weather and mud are proving a major obstacle to the set-up. The craning-in of boats (botht the floating ones and the land display ones) ran about a day longer than expected, mainly because of the difficulty of moving the trailer lorries and the big crane around the site. Huge amounts of metal tracking have been laid. The big excitement today has been when the one stone-surfaced track decided it wouldn't thake the weighh (78 tons) of the big crane that had just finished lifting the boats. As section of the road sank, and the crane was stranded at some nasty angle from the vertical. They had to bring in three other cranes to get it back onto solid ground before it could leave the site. The plan that's been announced tomorrow to get the remaining traders onto their pitches is to park their vehicles on the trackway round the perimeter of the site and get as big an army of volunteers as possible to carry all their stock manually from the vehicles to the stands. And our team were runners-up in the quiz this evening - beaten by a team with superior local knowledge. The local weather forecast has been promising for several days that the end of the rain was imminent, but it ain'thappened yet. EA are talking of dropping the level of this reach of the river by five inches to lower the water-table and help the water drain off the site. Mike Stevens narrowboat Felis Catus III web-site www.mike-stevens.co.uk Defend the waterways. Visit the web site www.saveourwaterways.org.uk
