Taraloka

construction traffic!

This sign has been at the end of the track to Taraloka for about three months - ever since a British Waterways canal maintenance crew doing some work on the canal bank accidentally broke through into a very extensive badger set - thus de-stabilising the canal bank, causing a partial collapse and a flood. This happened just opposite where our retreat centre buildings are. Fortunately for us - but not for our neighbours on the other side of the canal - the badgers had excavated their set on the sunnier south-facing side of the canal away from our land. Have a look on the Bettisfield Village website for more photos.

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drained section of the canal

In a matter of days the piece of land next to our canal bridge was an engineering site! Complete with very large excavators, offices, piles of materials like pipes, steel reinforcements and electricity generators. It was noisy. Well noisy for us. Lindsay and I met up with the British Waterway project manager who was very sympathetic and helpful. Within a couple of days he had arranged for much quieter generators to be installed.

Last week the heavy machinery moved out and the works site was dismantled. Now all that left is a slightly muddy bit in the field. The fences are back in place, the tow-path is open again. And they repaired bits of our track where the heavy loads had done a bit of damage.

And the badgers? On the one hand, badgers are a protected species in UK.  On the other hand canals need to be kept safe! Now that the necessary canal bank strengthening has been done and steel pilings added, we are hoping that they will take up their residence again before too long.

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photo by Neil Phillips

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