When I first moved to the village it was still pretty usual for people to walk to the shops along the track which provides a shortcut, away from traffic
I used regularly to pass the time of day with an old man who liked to sit on one of the benches. He must have been in his nineties & was always beautifully dressed in very good tweeds with plus fours, & a pair of well polished chestnut gaiter boots which I coveted. I always assumed he must have been a gamekeeper or estate manager
The track was out of use while they laid a (much needed) new water main beneath it. The next time I saw the old gentleman he was clearly angry. In truth I found it difficult to follow what he said, but it was about drainage. Somehow the workmen had blocked something & failed to remove the blockage. “I told them, I told them. But would they listen?”
He was quite right. The track became a mud bath whenever it rained. The council came & laid down a lot of hardcore, but the problem persists. I hardly ever walk that way now. Apart from the damage to shoes, I feel apprehensive about what a slip might do to my back
The incident did however make aware of manmade drainage, of which I had previously been blissfully unaware (we learned quite a lot about rivers etc in geography). We just take for granted all the work which has been done in the past, all the small drains & culverts carrying water into the streams
There are 2 new(ish) housing estates near us. One was clearly built with awareness of drainage in mind; there are sturdy brick-lined culverts to take the run-off into the stream & the front gardens are all mostly earth or gravel. Where tarmac has been used it seems to be the porous kind. New drains were installed on both sides of the lane at regular intervals
The estate up the hill has been altogether different. The site was originally acquired by one of the upmarket builders, but they eventually sold it on. (I find it a bit suspicious that this happened soon after a thorough soil survey had been done – the site slopes quite steeply. But then, volume builders have all sorts of reasons for deals on their land banks)
The eventual developer clearly struggled, with cash flow & endlessly changing subcontractors at a time when building labour was in short supply. Management & quality were poor – just the other week they were replacing slates on one roof. Some of the houses are still unsold, & a few more look as if they are occupied by social tenants
The construction period caused all sorts of disruption & interference with traffic – even for pedestrians. Complaint after complaint seemed to produce no improvement
A new access road had to be constructed off the lane, just below the main road where the lane curves gently to the left. Almost invisible to the casual glance there is a slight hump in the access road along the line where it meets the lane
The hump becomes all too obvious whenever it rains. Instead of running into what was once a large field & valuable soakway, water just runs past the opening to the access road & ripples down the lane. No wonder the bridge at the bottom has developed large puddles
So now, every evening I go home on a rainy day, I feel a slight apprehension about what I might find
