Thwarted again by Inert working on Saturday. 19th September 2020

 I arrived relatively late on Manor farm, about 7:20 am. After a brief pause to photograph two Red Kites swooping on some kill near the sewage works, stomped round to the ridge. Whilst photographing the latest progress on the Land mass, I spotted a heavy earth mover driving onto Manor farm, at 7.40 am.  A couple of minutes later, a digger clanked and squealed over the bailey bridge to join the heavy earth mover.

Time for me to get off Manor farm. Sigh. I may well have to move my stomp to Sunday. Arriving earlier will not work as dawn it getting later and later.  This situation is likely not to last too much longer. I noticed that the job of the digger and heavy earth mover is to make inroads into all the spoil dumped around the pump station during autumn of 2019 and winter/spring of 2020.

I don't really understand why the bulldozers can't shove all this spoil into Cormorant lake (south). It's seems a bit of a long winded exercise to load up the heavy earth mover and have it trundle around Cormorant lake (south) to drop the spoil, only for the bulldozer to shove it into said lake.

Also, the south vehicle track can best be described as a single track road with passing places. One of the pinch points being the heavy earth mover, blocking the track whilst it is being loaded with spoil by the heavy earth mover.  Hopefully the single track road will become properly two way once all the piles of spoil near the pump station is cleared away.

I had an unusual mid-week stomp, in that it was Tuesday rather than my normal Wednesday.  There didn't seem to be as many tipper trucks trundling around as the previous week.  This could be an illusion, as it takes time to load them up with spoil when they are on Chandlers farm.  However, it was very gratifying to see four lorries on the land mass, with two passing each other on vehicle tracks. This should speed up progress no end, plus save Cemex shed loads of money.

I can't see Inert accepting a fix priced contract for this restoration. Especially as lengthy delays, measured in years, seem quite the norm. It makes government projects seem models of efficiency by comparison.

Our on-off pump was chugging away on Tuesday, but by the looks of things it was off by Saturday. I couldn't get near it on Saturday, due to the digger and earth mover, whist the wind was blowing in the wrong direction for me to hear it from the south footpath. The alternative outflow from the settlement ponds, which was flowing on Tuesday, had dried up by Saturday.

Oh, I spotted at least eight Roe deer on Manor farm, on Saturday. Six females were in one herd. Most unusual.