Wednesday 16 May 2012

Washes Awash

The Old Bedford and New Bedford Rivers are two man-made bypass channels linking Denver and Earith. The New Bedford River is tidal and navigable by those who find its extreme boringness novel enough to warrant exploration. It's also much quicker than taking the Great Ouse route. 

Anyway, the gap between the two channels (known as the Hundred Foot or Ouse Washes) is used in times of flood for water storage. As you can see from this map, there are normally dry-ish fields (actually a lot of it it wetland) between them:


View Larger Map

But when I crossed them in the train at the weekend this was what I saw:


Yes, those are trees!

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4 comments:

  1. At least they are storing some water rather than letting it all out to sea!!

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  2. I'm rather surprised they haven't built a new housing estate on it yet...

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  3. Its not all that boring to navigate, you have the constant excitement of "will I make it to Denver in time?" (this is less exciting since the mooring was build outside Denver lock). Another advantage is priority into Salters Lode Lock which might be handy on a busy bank holiday weekend.

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