Today (23 November) the cycle track is flooded for about 200 metres east of the Ouse Viaduct.
The heavy rainfall of the last few days in the Great Ouse's Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire headwaters is likely to reach St Ives over the weekend, so I'd expect the water level to rise even further.
The busway cycle track seems to me to be susceptible not so much to the amount of local rainfall, but to water coming down the river from its huge catchment area after periods of heavy rain. I think the river authority tries to control the flow of water by using the section between St Ives Lock and Brownshill Lock (Earith) to hold water back, probably in order to minimise closure of the main road at Earith Bridge. I think we need to campaign for having the cyle track through the floodplain raised by another meter or more.
I am surprised that after all the recent rainfall, this had not flooded earlier. This morning going towards Cambridge it was just passable, with the section past the of the culvert water free.
ReplyDeleteComing home it was all flooded right the way back to where the track dips down to reach the culvert going towards St Ives. A few tried to cycle but I decided to walk along the top. You just have to make sure that when the uses come along, to stop and move away from the edge.
Luckily I am not at work for the next 2 weeks so it should go back down again, but it does annoy me that they spend £2 million expanding the car park and yet the cycle path regularly gets flooded.
I would love to meet the civil engineer who decided on the fancy bridge thing down that section and ask him how he worked out the height to build that little bridge.
Overall I am thinking of going back to the road for my journey to Cambridge everyday because as its is so wet down there, and there's so much silt, grit etc. all over the track, its beginning to really destroy the parts of my bike. Some days when its been raining the amount of grit and silt on the bike, on me, on my shoes is just dreadful.
Also after 12 months now of using the bus way, I find it terribly boring to cycle down every day. So I am going to service bike, remove all the crud on it and go back to the road.
As for it being raised, well I hate to be cyclical, but I have lived down here for 21 years, and even back in 1991, when the A14 was the A604, it was still being argued that it needed to be upgraded. I have never lived anyway like Cambridgeshire, where building things like roads and infrastructure is such a major stumbling block.
After 21 years we got the bus way, 2 years late, over budget by 60 million quid and they could not even get a simple cycle path right. I will not live in any hope that the cycle track will get sorted !
Flood update - Saturday 24 November - the cycle track is now flooded in both directions from the Ouse Viaduct and I would definitely not recommend trying to cycle through the water.
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