Whitchurch Breach, A New Angle

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Hello. As some of you may know, I'm on holiday in Kangofflin at the moment, which is where this canal goes to. So, I'm going to walk up to Witch and just have a little look at what's been going on in about the well, nearly 2 weeks since I was here last. I'm actually coming to site tomorrow for a proper visit with CRT and uh with Kia. So, we'll have some different videos coming later this week as well. But, I'm down here by Lockside Cafe, which is just here. And it's really good. It's well worth a visit. This is the Grindley Brook locks and they've got parking just over there if you want to come and pay them a visit. So, Grindley Brooks is a triple lock. So, you come in through the bottom gates and you fill up and this second gate takes you straight into the next lock. There's no pound in between.

[00:00:47]And then this comes up again and then takes you into a third lock at the top.

[00:00:53]So, it's basically three locks with only four sets of gates. So they were a lot cheaper to build, but they're a lot harder to manage because if you let the wrong amount of water through, you can have all sorts of trouble here. But this is a point where Septton and Ganymede were lifted out by the crane and that happened just in this basin here. So they were lifted from here onto a waiting lorry there.

[00:01:19]This is probably the only place they could do it. We weren't too sure exactly how they were going to do it at the time because of the space available really, but they managed to get a crane in and reach across. So, we're going to walk up and go to the next bridge and then cut across and go to the sideway crouch recovery we're working from and uh fly from there. I just thought it'd be nice to have a different view of the area because everyone seems to fly over from the other side. Now, there are reasons for that. You've got better visual line of sight and stuff for your drone. So, I'm going to have to stay high where I am, but let's pop down and uh I'll pick you up a bit further down. And just a short walk down. We're at bridge 30, as you can see. Um I'm not sure what this is.

[00:02:03]It looks like maybe something for the stop planks to go in. So, what you have in a lot of places on bridges is you'll have somewhere to put planks in to stop the water flow. Uh why they weren't used here, I'm not sure. So, they may not be, but I can't see any other reason for this. It looks like that was part of a door here. Look. Uh I just think it's now disused. But the bridge is kind of the last bridge before the brereech. And you can't actually go any further than this. You can see the toe path closed off. So the brereech is actually just over there. I think this is the start where the embankment starts to to rise up. And here we are. This is where all the winches came across. and they parked up just in this area down here through the opening. This was uh quite a good spot for them because it looks directly down the canal. So, I'm filming this video quite early. I set off about well from my accommodation about half 6 this morning. Uh it's probably about half 7 now. It's going to get very very warm today again. So, yesterday was 32 degrees and uh this is going to be just as bad today. So fingers crossed I can get this out to you. Signal as always in Shopshire isn't great. But uh here we are. Like here is the canal down there. And I can hear some drones whirling around already. So I'll pop a message in the group. But yeah, all the kit was here. I won't go beyond this orange fence.

[00:03:34]And they were dragging up through the gap that was cleared there. And that's where Amy got the spider in just there.

[00:03:41]It's quite easy to get to. It's not too far. About a mile. You can see the compound through the gap there as well.

[00:03:48]The zoom on this isn't fantastic.

[00:03:51]But that is just there. Anyway, let's get the drone up. So, I think this is going to be the only time I film from here. I got to be honest, visual line of sight is awful here. Now, as a drone operator, you always have to keep visual line of sight of your drone. It's part of the rules. You can do courses that take it as far beyond what I'm doing.

[00:04:07]Anyway, as you can hear, the drone's ready. I'll just show you. I've got a new drone now since my last visit down here. Uh I've got this the Mavic 4 Pro.

[00:04:16]So, one like uh Colin from Colin YC overview has got. But uh let's get this up. See what this beast can do. And this is just really an excuse to uh give this one a good fly actually. Right. So, let's go. This is where the coffer dams are on the far end. This is roughly where the work's going to go to. So it's 100 m from the lift bridge which we will show you now. You can see guys already on site here today.

[00:04:45]They start quite early. So the lift bridge is just up there and they're repairing 100 m. So there's 100 m of concrete channel going in here and then they will do work that they need to onto this embankment as and when needed.

[00:05:01]Now this is all being dug out at the moment. The works that's been going on since I was last here is to try and clear this embankment a little bit. And they've dug now almost back to Let me just zoom out a second. So, just getting used to this new drone.

[00:05:18]They've dug out almost to probably the tree just in front of the coffer down there. Now, you can just see actually on this side is a steel sheet piling in there. Still sheet piling there. Look.

[00:05:30]So, they've dug out. So, just there.

[00:05:32]They clear that all the way back. I'm not sure how much further they're going to dig down through this embankment.

[00:05:37]It's probably not as bad as what they had hoped. The tests that they've been doing will prove all of that. Uh let's have a look over in the compound first. So, all the diggers are still there, all neatly arranged like they were.

[00:05:53]The advantage of this new drone is I can see up high. I'm 100 odd meters up now.

[00:05:58]I can go to 120 mters and I can I can just zoom in right on top of stuff without having to sweep down.

[00:06:06]So there's three track dumpers there and uh two different excavators.

[00:06:12]Nice and neat.

[00:06:14]So when they rebuild this embankment, they're going to do it. If you imagine how they built the compound, there's layers of geog grid with layers of soil and it would just be layer on layer on top of that. They've got some of the bog boards down there already, ready to go.

[00:06:31]And if you look somewhere around here is a hole with a pump in. There we go. So, if you see that fenced off area there, what they've done is they've dug a sump down and they put a pump in there so they can pump the water off and it's coming out over on this other side down here.

[00:06:56]And you can actually see water coming out of it now. So that's water pumping out from sort of just after the bund cuz what happens these coffer dams they aren't the best. They will seal and they'll stop water as you can see but they fully rely on the material having a good sort of contact and the weight of water stopping holding that down to stop the water coming through. But they always trickle a little bit. It's part of the nature of them. You always have a pump to pump them out. So that's why you always put two in. It allows for redundancy. case. If one fails completely, the second one will do the job and stop everyone working on site getting flooded. I don't think K will work without having two in place.

[00:07:36]Right.

[00:07:37]So, this week they will be carrying on with all of this, digging this out, and we'll find out more tomorrow about what's happening. Now, on to the flood fields. You've got what was called the bottom pond down here has now been cleared. They were clearing that when I was here last. And the top one is nice and clear. But you can already see in that top one from up here. Is that green grass already coming up through or is that my eyes?

[00:08:05]That looks like stuff's coming. Yeah, there's definitely growth in all of this. Like up here.

[00:08:12]Doesn't take long for nature to take hold. Again, this is going to be very boggy down here. Let's just fly over here a minute.

[00:08:21]Uh, let's have a look to see if Kieran and Nut are here. I can't see anyone there. So, that means I'm probably quite safe drone wise. I still see my drone.

[00:08:29]Uh, but I can't see others.

[00:08:32]So, let's go across onto the arm. So, this is the canal arm. I can hear another drone now.

[00:08:39]It sounds like the little Neo.

[00:08:42]So, which waterways are the ones restoring this? Uh, and they've gone up as far as here. I don't think they're going to carry on past this bridge now because quite frankly it's quite difficult beyond that point. But that isn't Canal River Trust. That is a charity like the trust that I cover. Now if you look down back to the bogfields, you can't see them from up here, but all through here are a bunch of signs. Can just see the top of them now. Danger, deep mud. This drone's so good. I would never have got anywhere near that z. I'm not even fully zoomed in there. Look.

[00:09:18]And you can see that I'm 103 meters high. There we go. 24 time zoom. And you can read the sign. Incredible.

[00:09:25]But there is still a bit of water coming through here. Let's get out a little bit more. You can see the stream running through the middle there which goes down to the culvert just down there. That is still running a little bit. And there is still a little bit of water. It's actually underneath that tree there. Uh I think that's water just there. Look. So, this will take a little while to drain out, but the good news is that is running. I still haven't heard about any results from those uh cameras that went down through the culverts, but hopefully we should see something soon. Let's pop over here.

[00:10:05]So, ABC Marina, if you just want to have a quick look at the site, ABC Marina are just over there. That's where I usually park and walk down from.

[00:10:14]That's where Taylor's board were lifted out and stuff. And then the canal comes around here.

[00:10:22]The pumping setups are down by the ABC.

[00:10:27]So that's where about 30 million L a day is being pumped at the moment. And it comes around here. That's the arm up there. And then the water would have originally come around here. So the pump sets are now not far from where I am, where I left you on that last one of those last clips. the pumps come in which you can see just down by the bridge there. Now the bridge I crossed was about there somewhere and I walked through these woods which was a nice little walk across actually cross the road down through there and then came down across these fields here.

[00:11:02]This is usually a foot path. It's part of a a big walk walking route around here but at the moment you can come through it. So, if you've got any questions about what's going on here, please do add them in the comments or look on the posts. I've got one on Facebook and one on YouTube, uh, where I'm doing a question and answers where I try and answer them tomorrow.

[00:11:23]Who have we got here?

[00:11:30]Just think that's locals. I don't think that's uh anyone I know. It's already hot today.

[00:11:37]It's only 8:07. I'm tempted to make these videos a bit more of a weekly thing. So maybe come up on a Saturday morning when nobody's working hopefully and uh I can get a bit lower with a drone and um see stuff to the ground as well. But it is a long drive for me. So let me know what you think about those in the comments, please. Please like, hype, and subscribe if you can. It's a big help to the channel if you do. The algorithm loves a like. It tells them that you're enjoying the video and uh pushes it to more people. Subscribing helps me to push more videos to people.

[00:12:11]So, not only will you get notifications of the video, especially if you press that bell button, but it helps that again to push to more people.

[00:12:22]Hyping is a new thing on YouTube and is very much appreciated. Again, pushes the video to more people. If lots of people hype, please press that. These are all free ways to support me. Uh you don't need to give me any money to do that and does a lot for my channel. So, one last little pan around here to see what's going on.

[00:12:42]No one's really started yet. It's quite early. This guy's walking around sight, but that's about it.

[00:12:48]So, just one little look around to me.

[00:12:51]Show you I'm in visual line of sight.

[00:12:56]I'm back around this other side.

[00:12:59]Where am I? Just over there. So, I am by that orange fence.

[00:13:08]There I am.

[00:13:11]I am sweating already. It's so warm today already. Uh like I say, it's was it 8 8:12 and uh I'm already got sweat all down my back. I've only walked about a mile or so, so I'm glad I've done this early. Anyway, um it's a new drone, so I hope the footage was good. Please do let me know in the comments what you thought of the footage. Please add any questions that you've got for me for tomorrow. in the comments or find the posts that are there for it. There's one on Facebook and one on YouTube. These visits to site are every two weeks. Uh, and I kind of want to keep bringing you updates on the canal. So, I've been trying to think of ways to uh kind of get a video out every week from down here. I was coming up every week before with these two weekly visits we're doing leaves a gap. So, I might do um maybe a visit on a Saturday or a Sunday where I come up like I say, or I might do something else with some of the other guys um where I do a weekly update sort of video. What do you think of that? What would you like to see if I was to do that? It's a 7-hour round trip for me before I film. So, it would be good to have an idea of what you want on that. So, uh please let me know in the comments on that as well. Anyway, enjoy today. If you're out in the sun, be careful. Drink plenty of water. I haven't brought a drink like an idiot, but I'm going to go back to Lockside Cuff now and get one. Hopefully, it's open by the time I get back. So, uh, thanks for watching. Have a great day, and I'll see you again tomorrow from Inside the Bridge.