Fly tipping, pump springs a leak and infill continues 3rd November 2019

Sadly, after a reasonably quiet summer with regard to fly tipping, it appears that some low lives have decided to use the Longwater road entrance as a free rubbish dump. Some cowboy business.

Moving on to more positive matters. Once again I declined a Saturday stomp. The sky was cloudless and the air was crystal clear at 6:30am., which was not what the Met office said it would be on their Friday weather report.

I checked the Met Office's forecast and it steadfastly claim rain would come sweeping in from the west by 8:00am.  As they have a habit of getting the weather completely wrong for this area, I checked Auntie Beeb's weather report. It concurred with the Met Office.  I took a quick squint at the Met Office's (now somewhat useless) rainfall radar, which said a band of rain would track across from Bristol to Wokingham in approximately 3 hours from 8:00am.

Even during me eating a spot of breakfast, I noticed the sky getting overcast, with high level wisps of milky cloud. I held off going, and sure enough, by 8:00am the wind had picked up to force 4 and it was chucking it down. Ten out of ten to the Met Office and whomever the BBC use for their weather reporting.

Sunday, by complete contrast, was clear (though clouding slowly) and windless. I was hopeful of some decent wildlife shots, but there wasn't really much around.

Inert appear to have settled on remodelling Cormorant lake (south) with their usual strategy of dump, lump and flatten.

Dump: Tipper and grab loader lorries dump spoil around work areas.

Lump: Dumped spoil is quickly pushed into roughly the right place by the bulldozer; creating a No Man's Land type landscape

Flatten: The lump land is smoothed and shaped by the bulldozer driver.

This week's task appeared to be flattening and smoothing the Somme type landscape produced by the lump phase. There was some low key delivering of stuff to the site, but my Wednesday stomp showed the bulldozer trundling to and fro, smoothing off the land.

An odd feature was that a whole load of sand had been laid along the scrape and joining up with the previous week's infill. I simply strolled along this sand bridge onto the scrape; rather than having to gingerly pick my way across infill, testing the firmness of the ground as I went.  Some paw prints in the sand revealed that at least one fox had also trekked along the scrape.

Infill continues around the scrape, impinging on it further. This feature may well disappear, though Inert are skirting around it still; apart from the sand.

Our pump was wheezing away and has sprung a leak. I've seen it do this before, when it was frosty. The spray of water coated small trees, making them look very festive.

I also took a walk along to the end of the gravel spit, which separates Cormorant lakes north and south, to have a look at the infill. Again, a very curious piece of infill, with Inert flitting about the site. It almost seems like Inert decided to dump some spoil there for no particular reason.

Guess what numpty forgot to take a photo of the site of the former works buildings? Yep, me. Even though I hoofed it back with the express intention of photographing the vacant area, I forgot. Possibly as I was quite tired.

On with the slide show.