I puzzled over the heavy flow down our road all night. Why would Calf Lee, alone, be the source? All the other flows were finding their way into the cloughs and streams. This morning, when I saw that the road was still flooding, I set off to explore further up the flow.
It transpired that there were two reasons for the road to be flooded: first, Warland Reservoir’s drain, which tries to get the excess across the contour into Warland Water, had failed and the overflow had reverted to its old route straight down the incline; second, the roads in Calf Lee and down to Warland had a build-up of grass and silt on their edges so that once the overflow met the road it couldn’t get back into any of the natural stream beds. The result was a second river flowing parallel to, and at one point over, the cloughs. Even at the bottom of the hill, the flood didn’t get to join the river but fell off the bridge into the canal.
United Utilities were called and investigated, this morning, with a neighbour. Their initial position is that it’s all Warland’s fault for not keeping the road in good order.
So, I don’t know that trees planted on any of the farms would have helped the situation. Slowing the flows from the peat bogs and increasing their holding capacity by filling in the drains that feed the reservoirs would appear to be part of the answer.