“Wetter than a Haddock’s Bathing Costume…”... As I barked in the last Magazine, my Mistress works for the county council’s countryside service. She and her colleagues have been dashing around trying to cope with the effects of the wicked weather, which has been tormenting us since Christmas. I don’t know about you, but I am getting terribly bored of grey skies, rain and water everywhere. My fur seems to be almost permanently soggy. The main problem for my partner and her colleagues is that of fallen trees; with the ground so saturated the tree roots haven’t got much to secure them, so it doesn’t take much of a wind to fell the once-mighty bowers. Where Rights of Way are concerned, it is actually the landowner’s responsibility to deal with any fallen or unstable trees. However, it can be difficult to identify the relevant landowner and get them to deal with their trees, so it is often quicker (and more cost-effective!) for the county’s access teams to remove the offending trees. One of the first reports Mistress encountered was in a parish near Alton. 13 trees were down on one path alone. This held the record for the most fallen trees on one path which Mistress had received, kept it for a few minutes, and was broken by the arrival of a report from a member of the Ramblers’ Association concerning 16 trees down on another path. In her particular area, which goes from the edge of the Worthies, by way of Winchester, Stockbridge and Romsey, to the county boundary just beyond Andover, 69 fallen trees have been reported since Christmas week. As well as this, four major routes in her area have been badly flooded. And still the rain continues to fall. For a large part of 2013, works with volunteers, the access team and colleagues from the Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency were planned and carried out to improve the Itchen Navigation path from Winchester to just outside Eastleigh. In excess of thirty tonnes of path gravel, hours of work and effort from staff and volunteers resulted in a vastly improved path.
The same bit of path, as it looks now:
Most of it is probably halfway across the Atlantic to New York by now. It made my partner’s colleagues desperately sad to see the devastation. But I have seen the pictures on the BBC website. We have been so much more fortunate than those good folk of Somerset and other places which have been literally swamped – and for that we must be thankful.
Alresford: At the bottom of The Dean my friend Boris wonders where his path has gone… PHOTO FROM US OF THE SPRING GARDENS FORD (BRIDGE NOW UNDERWATER) Alresford: Near to my house, the ford-bridge is underwater – and the sheep may wonder if they’re grazing safely… Gisèle the Parson Jack Russell Terrier