Tag: millstream Ringwood

Flood Plain

Kingsbury's Lane 12.12. (2)JPGJackie shopped in Ringwood this morning whilst I walked up and down that town’s section of the Castleman Trailway.  We then met in the Bistro for lunch and drove back home.

In recent weeks I have noticed sandbags against all the garden gates, walls, and fences in Kigsbury’s Lane.  This morning I saw why.  The lane was full of water and impassable, either for cars or pedestrians. Burst water main 12.12 To compound the problem, one of the gardens contained a burst water main.  As an alternative route through to the river, I tried King’s Arms Lane and was able to arrive at the other end of Kingsbury’s.Kingsbury's Lane 12.12. (3)JPG  Here I met a woman called Barbara, who had grown up in the corner house I had just photographed.  She told me that her family’s particular corner had always been subject to flooding but the whole street had never suffered so.  The saturated green opposite, called The Bickerley, is a fairground venue.  When Barbara was small she had watched the fairs from her window, wishing she had the money to attend them.  I accompanied her along the Bickerley finding the least muddy and waterlogged terrain together.  She asked about conditions at Minstead because her daughter was driving down from Scotland to visit her father-in-law who lives there.  I was able to reassure her.

Had the Trailway not been raised significantly from the normal river level, I doubt that I would have been able to walk along it.  The Avon and the millstream were pouring into the lakes that had been the neighbouring fields, which were now totally submerged.  Water fowl were in complete possession of the field from which I had recently seen horses being rescued.  Twitchers with binoculars were gazing at the birds in their unaccustomed habitat.  Photographers were out in earnest.  One young woman carrying a tripod, trailing behind a man with an immensely long lens, was amused when I quipped: ‘so you get to carry the tripod’.  ‘Yes.  That’s my job for the day’, she replied.  Had I been ultra sensitive I might have felt the little appendage hanging around my neck to be rather inadequate.

Quite a cluster of cameras were gathered at the point where the Trailway bridges the river Avon. Horses in water 12.12 Here there was a group of waterbound ponies struggling to find fodder.  They were feeding as well as they could on a few clumps arising from the bank of the Avon.  Their feet were in comparatively shallow water;  just beyond their noses the river rushed past.  With other watchers I speculated about whether they could swim across the river where there was some still dryish land.  One looked as if he were contemplating it but thought better of it.  A group of young people sporting RSPCA insignia hurried to the scene and continued on past. Horses in water 12.12 (3) They said the horses were the reason for their attendance.  I wasn’t sure where they sped off to.

This evening Becky, Flo and Ian arrived to stay for Christmas.  It is actually Flo’s birthday, which she shares with Oliver.  The opening of our present to Flo caused a certain amount of amusement.  We gave her a Pleo, which is a robotic dinosaur.  The first reaction came from her brother Scooby.  Scooby is a Jack Russel terrier who has undergone a head transplant.  For the uninitiated this is my way of indicating that his head seems to be too big for his body.  Showing a certain amount of jealous insecurity, Scooby approached first me. then Ian, the two least doggie people in the room, for succour.  When Flo discovered that the instruction leaflet was in various European languages other than English, Ian suggested that his failed German O level might be of some use. Ian, Becky & Flo 12.12 Becky and Flo found this amusing.

Later we dined on Jackie’s beef stew followed by bread and butter pudding and Florence’s birthday cake. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, Ian Peroni, Becky fizzy water; and my choice was Dino sangiovese 2011.

The Avon In Spate

There are nine very tall panels to our bay window where the dining table is situated.  This gives us a kind of treble tryptich view of the beautiful lawns and trees beyond.  Over lunch we watched a pied wagtail running around, it’s bobbing appendage providing evidence of the aptness of its name.  A robin was hopping in the background.

Having to wait in for TV technicians, we did not go out until mid-afternoon.  Jackie drove us to Ringwood where she went shopping and I went walking.  From the main car park I walked through Meeting House Shopping Centre, across the High Street, and down Kings Arms Lane to Riverside Walk, along the bank of the river Avon and back to the car park to meet Jackie for our return home.John Conway's tomb 11.12  Still standing in the shopping centre is John Conway’s tomb.  It looks to be about eighteenth century, but is now worn illegible.  Instead of grass and daisies it is adorned by bricks, chewing gum spots, and dog-ends.  The other night it bore an empty drinks can.

Tree in pond, Ringwood 11.12At the end of Kings Arms Lane a village green now has a pond which surely wasn’t planned.  A bare tree does a dance on its surface.

As I approached the actual riverside I was amazed to see the path I would have expected to walk along completely submerged and the gate to it padlocked. Riverside Walk, Ringwood 11.12 Trees sprung out of fast-flowing water and, as Jackie put it when seeing other such waterlogged fields, tufts of greenery stood up like the marsh symbols on Ordnance Survey maps. I walked around some houses and crossed a bridge which had a torrent running only just beneath it.  The Walk itself was on a high enough level to be traversible, but either side of it the terrain was covered with water, with streams pouring into fields.  This was a combination of the Millstream and the River Avon.  It was hard to tell which was which.

Ponies awaiting rescue 11.12As I gazed across a field that was now a lake, I saw two ponies apparently tethered to a horse box on one of the few areas of solid ground.  I wondered if they were about to be rescued from a watery grave.

Walking left along the riverside I came to a road and turned back to follow the other direction, meeting a friendly man who told me some of the local history.  It was he who confirmed I had been watching the Millstream and the River Avon.  He was walking his two small terriers.  This was Mike Hooper, who turned out to have been working at Paddington Station in the 1970s when I had been working in the area.  He had lived in Ringwood for the last twelve years and had never seen the area so flooded.  He said the water level was usually three feet below the bridge I had crossed.  He pointed out new houses at risk of flooding, and a caravan site where the residents needed to wear Wellington boots to cross to their field.  Another man’s huge garden had become a lake.  He told me there had been twenty ponies in the now waterlogged field not long ago, and that they were being moved out.  They had been standing in water.  He thought the two I had seen were probably the last of the group which had been being kept in a field rented from the farmer who owned the land.Swan on field, Ringwood 11.12  Swans, egrets, and other water birds now claimed residence.

After I parted from Mike I saw some activity at the horsebox.  The ponies were being coaxed into it.Pony being led into box 11.12  I spoke to the woman doing this.  She was a very pleasant person who was the owner of all the ponies who had been in the field.  These were the last two being removed.  There had been twenty one in all, and I was watching  ‘the awkward ones’.  One had developed a certain lameness since yesterday.  Whilst the woman, Jeanie, was talking to me, one of her horses emerged from the box.  We were leaning on a stile some yards away.  ‘Get back in that box’, said Jeanie, kindly but firmly.  Like a reluctant dog being told to sit, the animal lifted a tentative hoof, and reluctantly, stutteringly, began to comply.  I learned from Jeanie that the forest ponies, although roaming free, are actually owned by people who have ‘forest rights’.  There are sales of them just as there are of other livestock.  She has some in the forest and some in fields.  On a couple of occasions she has recognised her own ponies in photographs in the media.  A local newspaper has put some on disc for her.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb roast pork with crunchy crackling.  I drank more of the McGuigan Bin 736 whilst Jackie preferred the English Three Choirs Annum 2011.