Waterway to work those biceps - no weedy arms here!

The Maidenhead Waterways project aims to restore and enlarge waterways through the town centre, making them accessible for everyone to enjoy, whether by boat, on foot or by bicycle. A major part of the development is the Green Lane Weir, which opened in March. The weir has increased the water level through the town centre streams, making them navigable for small boats, enabling natural vegetation to return along the banks, and making the streams accessible to wildlife such as fish and eels. In turn this is encouraging bird-life.

This evening Amy, Tara, Jen, Jess and Charlotte met Richard Davenport, Ian Caird and friends from Maidenhead Waterways to help clear weeds from around the weir and the eel pass, which runs underneath the boat rollers. With Maidenhead Waterways special extending rakes to play with, it is no surprise we had a weir-ly great tine!

Scooping and dragging weeds out of the water and into buckets took strength and agility - a fantastic workout for upper body and core. It was also oddly satisfying and addictive: oooh just one more sweep to see how much I can get... We spread the contents of the buckets on the banks a bit further upstream so that any creatures we disturbed could crawl back to the water. We also took care not to disturb any nesting birds.

A few highlights from the evening:

• Representing Eel-ing - Charlotte joined us for her second task as a tourist in our area and worked r-eel-y hard fishing out not only buckets of weeds but also a rubber frog. She also helped clear the way for any eels heading from Braywick into town. Without a clear pass they are eel-fated as they are unab-eel to swim through the weir's strong currents and instead become easy prey for birds.
• Fishing for compliments - as if the piles of weeds Jen managed to fish out weren't enough, she went the extra mile by litter picking on the footpaths in the Braywick Nature Reserve on her way to and from the task. (Water)way to go Jen!
• Back of the net - football star Jess doesn't pass on an opportunity to do good. She gained a new fan by using one of Maidenhead Waterway's nets to rescue a little boy's toy from the water after he dropped it whilst out for a walk with his mum. She also hit her goal of adding an extra 3km run to her training with a lap of Braywick with Amy after the task.
• Laughing all the way to the (river)bank - Kudos to Tara for running further than anyone else on her way to the task. She still had energy on arrival and shared some great raking tips - apparently deep and slow is the way to go...
• Swanning around - It was absolutely essential for the run report for Amy to stop and take all those arty photos of wildflowers and river birds. Honestly, she wasn't just ducking out of the heavy lifting because her weedy arms needed a b-rake.

A huge thanks to Maidenhead Waterways for hosting this task and credit to their Trustee Andrew Ingram for all of the best group photos in this run report - he captured our rake-ish good looks beautifully! We look forward to more working parties with you in future.

If you would like to support Maidenhead Waterways you can find them on Facebook and check out their website here. You might also like to sign up for our Towpath Tidy community mission in this area by clicking here.