The Bridge Works

On the 10th August we walked up East Street to go for one of our usual walks and saw this sign.

East Street to be closed for 3 weeks

Bridge works? We see no bridge, but it’s closed for bridge works. It’s a tiny little lane that goes up to Abbots Court and the Dairy.. that’s no longer a dairy because all the cows have been gone for almost a year now. Ah, hang on, there’s a tiny stream that goes under the road, it gets a bit of water in it in the winter if we have enough rain. I used to climb down through the hedge to have a quick paddle, definitely no swimming though. Anyway, apparently since 1999 bridges should be able to take a 40 tonne lorry. That sounds big. The milk lorry used to go up twice a day, but not since the cows left, and the bin men go up on a Tuesday to collect the rubbish and every other Wednesday to collect recycling. Maybe lots of other big lorries go up and down when we’re not watching?

Yep, the road's closed

There’s a sign, let’s have a closer look.

Official Notice

Looks like a big river doesn’t it. It’s not, I promise you, it’s not, otherwise I’d be in it.

We're being diverted..

Well, at least we can still walk up to the top of the lane via the maize field.

Mmmm sweetcorn, hurry up mum

So, let’s see what they’ve been doing.

They've dug a big trench! 16/8 5pm

Wow! That’s a big hole isn’t it. I wonder what they’re going to put in it.  It was all a bit boring and not a lot seemed to be happening so we gave up walking by every day.

Not a lot going on- 23/8

The diversion route was quite nice though. I don’t usually get to go in these fields.

It used to be full of cows

And this is the bridge they used to walk over on their way to be milked.

Isn't this fun!

This is what is looks like from the other end of the road.

Closed at this end too

On Monday the 24th we were walking up through the fields opposite our house and look what we saw!!

It's a big red crane!!

Why did we pick today to walk up here. Oh well, I don’t suppose they’d let us get close to it anyway. So, at tea time we rushed off to see what the big crane had been doing.

A massive bit of concrete pipe - 24/8

Almost finished then! Oh hang on, the road is closed for three weeks so they won’t be finished until at least the 5th September.

Big yellow digger is doing something 30/8 10.24am

He’s filled in the big gaps now.

Two hours later 12.24pm

It’s getting very interesting now, so we made sure we went back the next day to see the progress.

31/8 We have tarmac at 12.52pm

Off we went to do our big walk and when we came back later it looked, well… you spot the difference.

15.11pm The bucket has gone

And the flattening machine has gone too.  So they really are nearly finished.

Soil!

Well that was on the 1st and we went back on the Friday to find that the signs had been packed up and the road was open again!!

Waiting to be collected

But we can walk on the new bridge. Doesn’t look like much of a bridge.

Smells all new

So, I guess that’s that then. Now we just wait to see how all the 40 tonne lorries like driving over it. I wonder if it will ever get driven over by one.

Grass!

This last photo was taken on the 14th September. As you can see, the grass seed is growing and already weeds and other plants are coming through. It won’t be long before we won’t even be able to tell the difference.. except for the black stripe across the road.

Hmmm we do wonder how much this all cost – I think all of us walkers would much rather they had spent all that money on cutting the public footpaths and bridleways. They did do one of our local bridleways but there are lots that haven’t been cut because they haven’t got any money. We’ll let you work that one out.

~ by Dolly on September 14, 2011.