Bridging finally put in over Colebrook cut next to Longwater road entrance. Nature reserve area in progress. 15th Sept 2024

I have spent most of this summer in a ditch at the bottom of our garden. The ditch is 11m long, 5m wide at one end and 4m wide at the other. It's sides have basically been eroded to it's current, prodigious proportions from about 0.5m when it was originally cut about 150-200 years ago.

The previous owners of our house installed decking over the ditch. I've hated, nay loathed and detested this decking since we viewed the property over 13 years ago. Decking is lethal when wet. It's like an ice rink. It also rots, regardless of how much, so called, preservative I applied to the thing - hastened by the enormous quantity of leaves that fall on it from our trees.

The decking had reached the point where it was so rotted I actually put my foot through a section. I decided to a) remove the decking, and b) replace it with a reverse soakaway - retaining the actual ditch, and c) back fill the remainder of the ditch around the soakaway crates. The cost of replacing the decking would have been of order £6K. Plus, the ditch as such was now historical in nature. The housing estate built around the ditch now meant that half the rain on the west side of the ditch now went down the sewers. The south end of the ditch had been filled in for the housing estate - so we were now the end of the ditch. Whilst the owners of the land on the east of the ditch had changed the drainage so that rain water now flowed northward, and not into our ditch.

Thus, I've spent most of the summer, in the ditch (complete with foul smelly blue-grey mud, and sinking up to my calves in silt) clearing the bottom of the ditch, installing soakway crates with geotextile wrap, removing the decking and filling with 25 tonnes of soil. The latter provided by our landscape gardener - who was more than happy to drop soil round to us as it saves him having to pay when he or his crew take the stuff to a tip.

The whole 'Reverse soakaway' design works a treat, coping admirably with the torrential deluge we've been having of late.

The preamble is simply an excuse as to why I've not visited the restoration of late. Other reasons include the inconvenience of a long detour to get around the California Crossroads road works - the road was closed for months, but opened last week. I also reckoned that Cemex wouldn't be doing much to the site - which proved correct.

Thus, I returned this last week to see that Cemex had returned to restoring the site.

Firstly, it looks as if Manor farm will be a nature reserve - or Conservation Area, to use the new parlance. Sheesh! Why do people feel the need to change perfectly understanding nomenclature? Signs have been posted around the site to say as much, not least one saying that the area is being turned into a nature reserve. I reckon talks have been going on between various parties (e.g. council, MGLG, etc) to refine the design of the site.

On more practical notes.

Bridging has been put in, this last week, over the Colebrook cut where it disappears under the Longwater road in a culvert. The bridging is a dirty great big, 1m diameter pipe. I wondered how this 'brdige' was going to be achieved.

A new gate has been installed to the fencing on the Blackwater valley footpath (aka south footpath) along side the Longwater road.

I've been informed that the section of bridlepath just north of the sewage works has been increased in height, by about six inches. Hmmm, I feel it needs to be higher. This area, as I have reported in the past, floods terribly, with the as installed path submerged in water.

I've also been told that work was done on Manor lake. It appears to have been widened, and it's north shore scraped of vegetation. The latter is brilliant for birds, as they used to love the old north shore of Cormorant lake (as I called it), which was always scraped clear of vegetation.  I'm not sure as to the extent of the widening - if it even happened.

Not much else appears to have occurred on the site. Hopefully more will be done over the coming months - not least removing the stupid 60 mph zone of the Longwater road next to the reserve. Most people only do 40 mph along this section, anyway. It will be much easier for a car park to be built as the sight lines will now be excellent.

I'll have to drag myself down to the site in the near future to see any further progress.