Pump station mound top smoothed over. Why? 11th December 2021

I discovered that my blog has over 7,800 photographs. I do spoil you lot.

Once again, Inert and Co appear, on the surface, not to have accomplished very much this past week. This is not to say they accomplished a lot, whether on Manor farm or Chandlers farm. It’s just there isn’t much evidence on Manor farm.

What appears to have happened is the top of the mighty pump station mound has been smoothed down. I can’t work out whether soil is being taken from the mound or if the bumps and lumps on the top have simply been smoothed down.

Logically, the latter is silly. This leaves the former as a likely explanation, but yields a further conundrum - what did Inert do with the soil? There is no obvious sign of soil being dumped anywhere on Manor farm. I can see no further infill of what is left of Cormorant lake (south) - the obvious place to put the stuff. Neither are there any obvious vehicle tracks in the mud to point to where soil might have been taken.

Despite the heavy rain we’ve had this past week (it is still a La Nina event), the land bridges and south vehicle path remain remarkably firm.

The heavy rain has led to flooding. Firstly, my nemesis is back - a depression in the south vehicle track between the copse and my mighty mound. Basically, it is one huge rut in the track caused by heavy traffic. It is deep. It is filled with water and gooey mud the consistency of quicksand. As usual, I had to take a detour around it.

Secondly, the actual flooding is on the former Finch pond part of Manor farm. Water levels from what is left of Finch pond have broached parts of the south vehicle track, and congregated in deep tyre ruts. However, the water does extend past the tracks in places. I feel it wouldn’t take much more heavy rain for flooding to start creeping toward the south footpath.  Bear in mind that parts of the south footpath running alongside Moor Green Lakes reserve are prone to flooding.

The southern gate to Fleet Hill farm part of the Longwater Road Nature Reserve was wide open on Saturday morning. I did not investigate whether contractors were working on this part of the reserve.