13 Wallbridge, after the wind

We left home at 8-45am to take Woodpeckers to her next Christmas Market, the fourth in 48 hours. I was only delivering this time so could look forward to returning home, but honours go to Helena for her commitment to the cause. When we reached the Wallbridge area to head off to Stonehouse, we turned onto the A46 only to see this tree had fallen over the stone wall of this property.

When I returned about thirty minutes later some tree surgeons were already cutting the top branches blocking the road so I stopped to grab a blip. I went behind the road to see the full extent of the damage not actually thinking there would still be cars parked in the business' yard. 

The white mini was not as badly damaged as I envisaged when I looked closely and it may not be a write-off. I looked into the hole where the tree had stood and saw that the roots looked very rotten, and noticed how one-sided  the tree had become with all the pollarded branches on one side. It is not surprising that it fell when the winds were as strong as they have been and with torrents of rain over the last few days.

I spoke to one of the tree surgeons who said it was a horse chestnut and that, yes, the roots were rotten. He thought that the fact that the car park had tarmac covering it might have affected its ability to get water. But the site is only thirty yards from the River Frome, so the water table must be high. He also sais that he thought it was only about sixty years old. Hmmm. I've a feeling it was a lot older given the size of its trunk and the successive pollarding. Maybe a certain Scottish blipper from Oban will have an opinion about that?

The building is rather interesting. It used to be the headquarters of the Company of Proprietors of the Stroudwater Navigation, built in 1780, and is adjacent to the infilled Wallbridge Basin, on which I was standing, which formerly provided wharves for the canal. The canal runs just a few feet behind the building, now called Bankfield House', which is used as offices and is no longer associated with the canal. A colleague makes films in the attic, behind the top window. The canal has recently been regenerated as the first part of a plan to reunite this canal with the national inland waterway network via the Sharpness to Gloucester canal at Saul Junction, six miles to the west.