Tag: boating

December 11th – After a couple of years in limbo, I’m sad to note that after all the fuss and brouhaha, the old boating lake at Chasewater as just been filled in with earth and grassed over.

Staffordshire County Council, the park’s owners, couldn’t be doing with cleaning the water, so in a fit of typical reductive thinking, they drained the pond, left it empty for a couple of year and just filled it with earth that’s now turfed.

With no drainage in the concrete liner it will be interesting to see how this survives. One would hope they drilled the base. But maybe not. They haven’t even kerb edged the grass properly, so it will just die back and recede.

A botched solution to a botched problem that was really quite simple: it just needed good housekeeping.

September 14th – The boating lake at Chasewater has been drained for cleaning, and the old water spread on the west heath, by the railway. Odd to see this pool empty, but the feral white geese and opportunist wagtails didn’t seem to mind too much.

I noted they had warning signs out to avoid the area where the old water was spread, like it was suddenly a health hazard; whereas when it was in the pond, we were invited to sail toy boats and paddle canoes in it…

Let’s hope it’s kept a bit cleaner in future.