Proposed car park not big enough. Schedule one year late. Capping begins. Pt 1 31st July 2022

Controversial start, what?

It is amazing what you can find on the internet. A more thorough search of Wokingham Borough Council's planning website revealed this little gem.

You'll have to click on it for a larger view, and even then you'll find it difficult to read what has been typed. Someone at Cemex picked a weird font.

The gist of it is, all the work listed on Manor farm has got dates for last year, 2021. Thus, reeds were supposed to be planted along the margins of the largest of the Finch pond complex. This area is still being shaped and sculpted by Inert. However, this diagram does give hope that the area will be finished off by next year. The schedule is pretty close to that for Fleet Hill farm restoration.

Now the car park. The proposed number of spaces is 20. I thought it was 58.  20 spaces is too small. The Moor Green Lakes car park can accommodate up to 35 cars, and can get very busy. The MGL car park is well hidden, mid way along a single track road, little used by traffic.  MGL itself is almost completely unknown to residents of Yateley, Eversley, Finchampstead and Wokingham - simply because it is off the beaten track.

Longwater road nature reserve will be front and centre on a busy road. People will be much more aware of its existence. Let's face it, birders are already aware of MGL and the nascent Longwater road nature reserve.

OK, enough controversy. Back to our scheduled program.

Inert were hardly to be seen, when I stomped around the south footpath on Thursday morning: one silent, forlorn yellow digger, and one heavy earth mover paying a flying visit. There didn't seem to be any progress.

How wrong I was.

An early Saturday morning stomp across the site, revealed a whole host of activity had taken place. I start part one of this update with the north shore of the new Finch pond-marsh-reedbed complex.

Inert have continued to profile the edge of this area.  They've transported more topsoil looking stuff onto the area, adding to the row north of the embankment.  Curiously, they have piled spoil around a large depression north of the banking, and profiled its edge. This is really odd, as this area is supposed to have a couple or three small ponds dotted in grassland.

They've also smeared a thin layer of what looks like mud across the west side of Finch pond Snr - the biggest of the Finch ponds.  They've also done this elsewhere. I can't work out if this is just a thin layer of topsoil or a more waterproof capping layer.  It's dead curious, especially as the stuff looks like Pahoehoe lava.