Baffled with the infill strategy. 23rd January 2021

There is heavy snowfall, today. Some 3" (75mm) fell in 1 1/2 hours. We know as we walked in it from when snowfall started to when it ended. In contrast, we had an all day deluge last Wednesday. I didn't bother going to Manor farm.  Instead, I went late Thursday morning.

Unsurprisingly, the Blackwater river was running high. Not bank full or flooding, but still high and fast.  By contrast, Finch pond was relatively empty, which was surprising as the land bridge is still in place.  I wonder if Inert have installed a pipe underneath the bridge?

My Thursday stomp revealed on the bulldozer; no trucks or diggers. The bulldozer driver had parked in the middle of the landmass, partially hidden by piles of spoil that were higher than the bulldozer is tall.  He didn't move for the 15 minutes or so I  walked along the south footpath. Probably tea break time.

I did pay Saturday visit. It was only minus 2C, with no wind, but lots of cloud, sadly. When viewed from the ridge, the land mass showed little change.  Hardly surprising.

I had to detour in a large semi-circle to get around Fleet pond and the deep drainage ditches. The going was quite firm, despite the amount of rain we've been having. I guess the ground is settling and compacting.

Only when I went just past the copse on the south vehicle track did underfoot conditions get really tricky. The bulldozer had been working on the track a couple of weeks back, and I had hoped all the runny mud had been scrapped off it.  Well, yes in certain bits, but no in others, where the mud had been made even deeper.

I inched eastward along one section, my foot scrunching through the frozen surface, only to slide into thick, gooey porridge like mud. However, I gave up after 10m, and retraced my steps westward, before making it to the relatively secure bank running along the south footpath. I clambered along this until I made it to the vehicle track running on the land mass.

This track was very firm. And well it should be, as there is tons of hardcore and rubble underpinning it. What I did find surprising was how firm the soil was once I came off the vehicle track. Freshly bulldozed spoil is normally quite soft - even more so as the bulldozer has particularly wide tracks, so spreading its load.

Last week, I attempted to photograph a 'chasm' the digger had dug to get to the north shore of Cormorant lake (south). Although I knew it was deep, I didn't appreciate how deep until I photographed it this weekend. It appears almost as deep as our house is up to the eaves, say 7 to 10 metres.  It also appears to serve as a drainage ditch, which might explain why the land mass was not as boggy as I feared it would be.  There are at least two drainage ditches on the land mass, that I know of.

I made it quite close to the north shore of Cormorant lake (south), but was unable to get close enough to see if spoil had been pushed into the lake to make full contact with the gravel spit. The huge bank of spoil, marking the extent of the bulldozing, was far to soft to clamber on.  When I reviewed my photos, which I had taken of this area from the ridge, I did notice a pipe I had never seen before.  This will bear out further investigation the next weekend I make it to the site. Though I will have to go all round the north embankment, then down the east ridge to get to this area.

I then made my way back south and then east on the land mass. I got to the edge of the latest piece of bulldozing. I think a large amount of spoil had been bulldozed into the west shore of Cormorant lake (south) this past week. The west and east shores are now very close together, to the point that I am perplexed why the infill is not progressing faster.

You see, the land mass is currently much higher than the existing height of the land on the east side of Cormorant lake. This, coupled with the fact that Inert will have to dig out a long thin length of land to form the new, elongated Manor lake, leads me to conclude that there is enough spoil currently on the Manor farm to complete the infill and landscaping of this area.

Of course, this is my very amateur estimation. There may not be sufficient spoil, and there may well be other technical reasons for the slow progress.

Oh, our faithful pump was chugging away.