CLOSED for 85 DAYS - The Welney Wash Road - It always floods
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- čas přidán 26. 03. 2024
- #cambridgeshire #roads #infrastructure
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Full Video - • HGV Fail & Recovery!! ...
Outro Music - / alfredmusicjazz
Words and music by Paul Simon / arr. Paul Baker
• Bridge Over Troubled W...
In this video, we visit Welney and try to work out why their main access road is closed more often than not. It floods... this much we know... but why!? Hopefully we'll find out... - Auta a dopravní prostředky
![Eminem - Houdini [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/22tVWwmTie8/mqdefault.jpg)
I like this video so I’ve pressed the button specifically for that 👉🏻
I liked this comment so I have pressed the button specifically for that too. 😊
Wicked Sweet Awesome.
@@248burty I like this comment so I’ve pressed the button specifically for that 😁👍🏻
I liked the video so thanks for reminding me to press the button specifically for that.
👍🏼 not 👉🏿
When I realised what the ending music was, I spat half a cup of tea over the keyboard. Dammit, now I need a new keyboard. 😆
There's a feasibility study for that.
@@JohnSmithShields It'll cost you....
You need a bridge over your troubled keyboard.
😀
Does it look like a piece of abstract Art...or abstract Paul?
Speaking as an Ely resident, it's like having my own personal TV channel. Thanks John, great content!
That's why it's called CZcams!
Well all i can say, streaming killed the broadcast TV star
@@philipmurphy2
Yeah and what they give us in place of them is just awesome too... ...
@@philipmurphy2catchy, you should write a song...
@@philipmurphy2 .. but we’ve gone too far, we can’t rewind!
Love the choice of closing music - very apt!
“Think, don’t sink” is some excellent signage there!
My dad had relatives who used to live in an old house called the “Welney hotel” on the north bank of the Old Bedford River. Apparently they used to fish for pike by using an old snooker cue and wedging it into the bank!
In California the signs read: WHEN FLOODED TURN AROUND DON'T DROWN
I've been on that stretch of road, when the water was right up to and level with the carriageway. Really eerie, you wouldn't want to make a mistake!! Incidentally, the Earl of Bedford employed Dutch land reclaimation engineer Cornelius Vermuyden specifically for that: he also drained Canvey Island in Essex, but we shouldn't hold that against him..
I was disappointed Cornelius didn't get a mention. The Dutch know how to control the wind and the waves.
Also, it is possible to get through quite a considerable depth of water in a car provided a) you drive slowly and 2) there are no manholes for your car to get stuck in. I have gone through floodwater up to the windows in a Ford Escort.
@@hairyairey No offence intended, but I wouldn't recommend that as a general strategy -- I've seen plenty of cars be stopped by much less water. _Can_ it be done? Yes, absolutely! In any car? Erm, probably not. I'm not enough of a car nerd to know if air intakes are usually up high, and then there must surely be exceptions. Modern cars with all their electronics likely alter the equation, too. Plus I'm sure there's other factors that influence matters that I don't know enough to imagine. So I'd add III) know where your engine's air intake is, and then Δʹ) a safety reminder (look, I know everybody will ignore it, but I'll feel off if I don't include it 😸), if there's any flow or current, stay out of water more than a few inches deep -- it's much easier to get swept downstream than you think! ♥
"God made the World, but the Dutch made Holland". And Canvey Island.
Don't blame Cornelius Vermuyden for Canvey he was probably not responsible!
Ten million is a bargain. Essex County Council recently rebuilt two roundabouts here in Colchester, at a cost of 24 million. Needless to say they are worse than the old ones.
I simply love local government efficiency. Worth every penny.
Brilliant choice of music for the end credits.
Love the _Bridge Over Troubled Waters_ as an outro! LOL! 😁
"Never."
That's gotta be worth £100,000 for feasibility studies - get your tender in!
I'm moored on the River Soar in Leicestershire, c.700yrds from the wonderfully named Slash Lane.
If I spill a cup of tea*, access to the A6 and Mountsorrel is buggered for weeks.
* True for other drinks.
Maybe the value of having open-ended feasibility studies is that it keeps planners occupied who would otherwise be required to mess up a real piece of road where it really matters.
Closed for 85 days and when it reopens, there'll be a hosepipe ban due to water shortage.
If building a bridge takes as long as fixing the Ouse bridge at Goole then leave it alone . I saw some workmen putting birthday candles on the cones.
Love it!😂😂😂😂😂😂
Years ago my Dad lived in a village called Hilgay which is near Downham Market. My Mum lived in Chatteris and so when my Dad wanted to see me he would drive through Welney. Once he picked me up and the wash had started to flood. Long story short he drove through it and wrote of his work van!
Great video Jon.
With the way council planning departments and developers work, looks like an ideal area for a housing estate. Near me there are some playing fields they want to build a couple of hundred houses on. Trouble is, for one/two months of the year EVERY YEAR its under water, making feasibility studies more difficult. Some locals even offered the use of their boat to the planning department.🤣
Catching up on what seems likes weeks of brilliant posts. Thanks for everything you do for this channel. Mr&Mrs6thDayBlue
Thanks guys, appreciate you watching! :) Donation much appreciated as always.
One of the only channels that is worthy of the specific button!!
Stuck around for the full closing tune as it’s such a banger.
Sail on, silver girl.
You have to remember too that up until not so long ago, farmers and communities engaged in warp flooding which would have taken the excess flood water and directed it into farmers fields through warp channels and drains thus spreading nutrients etc far and wide and would also stop it collecting in large areas and causing nuisance. Of course the property developer maggots were not bothered they were building on essential infrastructure doing its thing because no one is warping any more and now areas flood because of it.
That might sort of tie in with something I heard/read a good while back that it won't be financially feasible for the farmers to pump water from the arable land in something like 50 years or so, as there's only about that much good quality veg growing soil left. Don't know how much truth there was in that, and it was probably a couple of decades ago I learned of it! Best use (imho) is to let it revert to wetlands and let nature benefit.
My village! Been living here nearly 6 years. And it's a real feature of the village, for good and bad. The pub sometimes does a sweepstake on how many cars have to pulled out. Also, your insurance is invalidated if you ever get stuck because it's legally shut. I sometimes pass through at safe depths, which can be tracked via river level websites. Villagers never get stuck, only outsiders.
Oh, and big shout-out to ken goodger and his welney wash flood watch page, and if anyone is ever in the area, go to the lamb and flag pub! Best food in the country bar none. Steak and ale pie 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
That's because you alll have 4WD's with periscopes and exhaust stacks whereas the strangers don't and their BMW's choke on the water. I've been watching the Rufford Ford (Nottinghamshire) videos.
Insurance is not invalid, urban myth. Road closed signs are normally advisory (unless backed by a TTRO like at Rufford) and even if they are, loads of accidents are caused by people driving illegally (speeding, careless driving, dangerous driving) and your insurance is still valid.
@@1258-Eckhart I drive a fiat 500c, but being Italian, they engineered it in such a way, the air filter is in such an awkward place, it doesn't get wet. I mean you've seen the 500's swim through rufford right? But I never drive through anything more than the depth of my door sills, and never when it's fast flowing.
@@chriswaites1222 ahhhh copper telling me porkies on a power trip probably. Good to know.
First class outtro. My idea would be to leave the existing road as it is, and dig the 2500 acre flood plane deeper, so it can hold more water and therefore the road will stay dry.
The videos about a guy talking about roads is more interesting then what's on ITV
Agreed. I never - and I mean never - watch any tv anymore. It's all political BS, bbc lies and shouty people.
I’ve been across this as it starts to flood (I use it regularly, when I can). It’s a pain but part of living and working in Cambridgeshire.
Love this! The usual Auto Shenanigans stuff with a history lesson, geography lesson and a bit of climatology thrown in too! Jon will be growing a beard and wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches next!
For regular road closures, you could look at the Scottish snow roads. Cockbridge - Tomintoul, Crathie - Gairnshiel, Glenshee - Braemar, Dufftown - Rhynie, Banchory - Fettercairn, and the Bealah na Ba. B974 is often closed for weeks on end due to either ice or HGVs demolishing a particularly narrow bridge
A83 by the Rest and be Thankful with its 50odd mile detour is the one that springs to my mind
@@davidbarrass The 150 mile detour at Lochcarron for 6 months after the landslip was fun too
@@dough740
Watch it sonny.
If you're going down the landslide track, how aboot two counties being decapitated from the national rail network because of one of those silly named storms swiping it away at Dawlish.
Some things can't go on roads easily.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch The landslip at Lochcarron took out the Inverness to Kyle route too
@@dough740 Well. S'pose I don't remember it because I didn't hear about it because of the small matter of a border.
I was going to see your two towns and reraise you two counties. But then I got a bit adult about it so shall we call it a score draw‽
This would be the cue for an Australian (or an American) to say “thats nothing, we have bigger/longer/deeper roads flooded”. But I can’t think of anything even equivalent. Possibly it’s because we don’t have any Earls of Bedford.
Thanks a lot mate! You probably don't even have rain down there do you!? :D
That's been my route to Lincoln and Grimsby for nearly 20 years. Splendid explanation too, I'll send it to anyone who keeps asking 'why don't they build a bloody bridge' next time it closes. One thing you missed is the gateway at the top end that controls the flooding called the Denver Sluice, near Downham Market. As the name suggests it's a sluice gate, but it's huge and has brown signs directing tourists to it for lols. Half decent pub there too.
The pub at Denver sluices is closed isn't it?
Ah so it is. One of those places I was always going to stop at on the way home but never did.
The last time I drove along that road from Ely (must have been over sixteen years ago, I measure everything by when my wife died) there was no road signs saying that the road was closed until I got to the flood. Then had to drive back to Ely, and go around.
I love the way he skirts on the wholesome incompetence of those incharge be that today or in the 1600 🤣
I grew up locally to this area (near St. Ives, which Jon mentions) and always knew of those parallel canals (which were named as uhh 'rivers'?) but didn't know the history of how the floodplain came t to be. Thanks.
Also: at the southern end of this floodplain, there's Shelford Road which runs alongside the River Great Ouse. It's quite bumpy and the surface appears to have cracked in half in some places, so I hate driving on it...
Also also: on the right bank of this floodplain, near Earith, was where the tracked monorail experiments were held (the supports are still there and floods can surround them.)
Lovely jazzy remix of bridge over troubled water at the end there, and for those who didn’t clock the joke, bet you feel a bit stupid now don’t you?
Another great video John 🧲👍⚓️
We have a similar problem in Lincs, at a place called 'short ferry'.
It has flooded 3 times since October 2023, each time for several weeks. Acres of farmland is underwater, and a main road.
Look up the A19 just south of Selby in North Yorkshire. It was closed for about 18 months due to it flooding and then some of the road collapsing. (Around 2019/2020)They had to rebuild it. The diversions were a nuisance especially since one of the diversion routes was also regularly closed ….due to flooding.
Came here expected to learn about just roads but ended up learning a lot about British history and roads
The Cambridgeshire Fens is an incredible place that stretches into West Norfolk and into Lincolnshire and The Humber. And is liable to flooding especially when there has been lots of heavy rain and the ground gets flooded a lot.
When I stayed at Ely travel lodge last week I saw signs for this being closed.
It’s great you showed Ben Greggers footage. It’s a great episode that one.
Hahahaha 🎶 🎶😂
Cheers Jon yet again. See you Sunday 👍🏼
Love the outro theme! Simon & Garfunkel would be pleased.
Yes, us Dutch did this. And if you wonder how we managed the sinking land...we didn't really.
-6,76 meters (22 feet) below sea level and counting 😅
At least most of our through roads in areas prone to flooding are on bridges or dykes. Put the road one or two feet higher and closing times will be reduced drastically.
@@OutwhereThat can't be done there as the land needs to be an unrestricted flood plain. The only way of crossing it would be with a bridge or causeway that has drainage space underneath like the brick one built a few miles away on the flood plain in London Rd, St Ives in the 1800's.
Most flooded road in the UK?
Bosham: hold my pint
Morecambe Bay Coach Road: 'I don't think I've ever really been dry.'
Lindisfarne Causeway?
Took me a minute or so to get the theme tune at the end.
You're good, u always gets us thinking.
I may have personal experience of driving a Saab convertible along this road when it is flooded. It is 'interesting' to see the water above the bonnets and up to the side windows. All was good and I gave the car to my son as present/future liability shortly afterwards
Inspired outro music John.
The next time you come over to Bristol, you should have a look at the badminton road bridge that goes over the M4. It’s been closed for a year, it’s going to closed for another year at least, it’s been great fun
I don't read comments much but with this channel I make and exception as almost every one of them can be read in the style of John as if he's saying it himself. Notably the exchange regarding spat out tea on a keyboard.
And to place the crowning turd delicately atop the woodpile, the council chose now to close another part of the same road for resurfacing for several weeks I believe. Not doing it when the road is shut already for shits n giggles obviously.
There’s a wonderful pub in Welney called the Lamb and Flag. Go eat there if you get a chance cos you won’t regret it.
The original drainers called themselves The Adventurers and were a shining example of private finance initiative in that the capital was all private investment and they received newly drained grade A farmland in return. They employed an expert Dutch drainage engineer called Cornelius Vermuyden to design and oversee the work (We will gloss over the labour used to do all the work with buckets and spades) and he lived nearby in Wells Bridge.
Surprisingly interesting and almost therapeutic after a stressful day. Thank you.
Glad to hear, thanks for watching!
Great video. My Grandparents lived in Welney, and we were used to the road being flooded sometimes when we went to stay. Never a big issue really. Brought back a few memories!
I'm so pleased you didnt show our truck that got stuck in that for 4 days !! Lol 👍✌
Fascinating Stuff.
Please don’t wander out of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire just yet.
Thanks
With all the flooded rivers around there, he won't wander, he will ooze.
I'll get my coat.
That road was a pain in a butt for people like my mother who used to visit relatives. It's scary when it does and people are that thick they still take their chances in their Euroboxes. It' also lethal as you can't see the edge of the road and although in minor flooding you could follow the white lines but when it's a foot or so deep it all becomes one. It's not the only road to flood around there. The A47 can flood and the roads around The Brecks often flood. But it gives some of us to laugh at other peoples stupidity!
Thanks
Thanks a lot mate, appreciate that!
Used to use that road regularly during summer months.
Clever use of closing theme there Jon. 😂
PERFECT CLOSING THEME! Actually, wasn't that also from an old TV show?
Brilliant choice of music!
This video is the perfect blend of wonderful facts, stupid reasoning and English cynicism. Thank you sincerely to Jon.
Fascinating
Closed for 85 days. That’s like pretty much over 2 months or 8 weeks I think. Still The Fens are liable to flooding from heavy rain. I’ve been through The Fens and it’s amazing to see the landscape from Cambridgeshire to Lincolnshire.
Like a bridge over jazzy water
Jon, did you intentionally gift us all that golden edit nugget in which we see a series of photos showing the recovery of a "damp" lorry, red in colour, followed by a "red" lorry driving under the drone shot. I reckon it was intended,Jon. You're a fecking genius, you are.
A red lorry from the same company too
Ok who was singing along there at the end,😂 great video, and wonderful music 😁
Live right by here and it is a massive pain, but what a beautiful area too! Love seeing you back in the Fens again :)
In my region in NL. When the Ijssel gets too high, the road that connects the village Fortmond to the rest of the land flows over, the only way for the inhabitants to get there is by a tiny ferry/boat.
Excellent video 👍👍👍👍👍
Perhaps the locals could club together and visit an ex-Military sale and buy some amphibious vehicles and run a ferry!!
I liive just round the corner and have always wanted an excuse for s Stolley. Thanks..
The landlord of the Royal Hill in Melverley, (right next to the road and river Severn in Shropshire), does exactly that, big amphibious vehicle, sorry don’t know the make. Great pub, great beer and lovely home cooked food, highly recommended 👍
I don’t think enough is taught about the engineering achievements of things like this. I always thought it was ancient times it was marshes/ water , and was natural that it drained
Tomorrow is my three-year anniversary of moving to this neck of the woods, and barely had I unpacked the van with all my stuff in it than I started watching river levels like a hawk. My understanding of the Ouse Washes is "this strip of land floods so that the rest of the Fens *doesn't*". This winter just gone is the first time I've seen Earith flooded, but it could be argued that there was a point last year that was worse - Welney was flooded, Sutton Gault was flooded, Earith wasn't, but the A142 bridge at Mepal was closed for repairs. They could at least have waited until the summer to do that when the chances of Welney and Sutton Gault being closed was minimal, but no...
Eighty five days? In the village where I now live, the road connecting to the nearest town fell into the river. It took two years to fix it. About two weeks after it re-opened, the road on the other side of the village slid down the hill. That was 14 months ago. The local authority is now refusing the Parish Council's FoI requests about when it'll be fixed.
The first road, which I drive regularly, has one area of subsidence and two others which now flood every time it rains - the surrounding hills have been saturated for months. So it's only a matter of time. This is a tourist area, just don't try touring it.
Can't beat the 'feasibility study' .
Well done on the jazzy bridge over troubled water outro Jon, have you heard Mike Flowers Pops’ Wonderwall?
Been a good few years since I have been on that road. even in Flood, not quite as bad as it was in the video with a Nolan's truck being swamped and the unit being off the road.
I blame all the Grey Clouds we have been living under for months. Still stops us from having to see the blinding yellow ball in the winter sky I guess.
I went through there on the train in the Winter of 1984....it was flooded AND frozen.
Sod that for a game of soldiers,I thought....
I might start my own feasibility study company. Sounds amazing 💰
Hi John, you might like to do a video on Sandford Lane in Woodley, Berkshire. It's smaller road than this but similar to this scenario and is nearly always flooded and impassable whenever there is even just moderate rainfall.
Haha, the ending music was so perfect
up to £58million
so £158 million
with £100 million of that being on studies
Studies meaning the boys club.
"Studies", is that short hand for bungs? Quite appropriate "Bungs" might actually help in this case😜😜
Thanks Jon, I’ve often flown my microlight over the flood plain and seen it regularly flooded. Wondered about the history of it, and now I know !
Great music choices
Interesting. Never heard of the wash. Like how you kept the subject-appropriate outro going until the end of the bar.
To see how much the fend have shrunk you need to visit Holme Fen near Peterborough, a cast iron pillar from Crystal Palace. It was embedded into the peat, so the top was level with the surface of the peat, the top is now over 4 metres above the surface.
You might like this old video - czcams.com/video/68XqYAk942o/video.html I wasn't as good back then but meh...
Another great video
Love the videos, I'm from chatteris, which is a couple of miles from mepal and can confirm U pronounce it incorrectly in this video and the Wisbech to Ely vid
I see a booming market for rubber boats……. perhaps those single use jobbies that are clogging up the South Coast ports of the UK ? Instead of lounging in South Coast Guest Houses, or the local Bates Motel…….. their undoubted seamanship could be put to good use, ferrying the good Fen people across this troubled water……🎉
Loving the Simon and Carbuncle on outro 😂
My daily commute (before retiring) was from Littleport to March, using the Wash road. The issue is that the road is closed as soon as the water is level with the edge of the lowest part of the road. In other words the road would be closed when there was just a puddle on it or even no water at all. I have a Volvo XC90 which has a wading depth of 425 mm but it was still illegal for me to use the road. One solution would be to make the road level so there aren’t the dips in it an even out the water flow. Had this road been on the Cambridge commute it would have had a solution decades ago
I live about 5 minutes from there in Three Holes (yes I laughed when I heard the name). Been a pain in the rear with it being closed all that time as the diversion is so long. Only bonus is that there has been so little traffic I can only hear the occasional vehicle going down the main road that leads to it.
can I just say the editing is on point, great altro sir bravo..
John Thank you for that which you do, you seem to have had a mind meld with myself , Apparently when I moved here to NW Cambridgeshire(Peterborough)Fen Tigers could still be found, I've worked with a few, I can honestly say if a Seagull farts in Kings Lynn(40km away)you'll smell it here, I moved here in 1975, I now have Great-Grandchildren whom I usually visit, shortly after their birth, to study their feet, mainly between their toes, 😂😂😂
This reminds me of the landslide that closed the A816 near Ardfern near Oban last October. 70 tonne boulders and thousands of tonnes of soil meant residents having to use a boat to get to school/work/doctors.
As it's in both Norfolk and Cambridgeshire I suggest that the real problem lies with the punts in charge in the latter.
If you go a couple of miles out of Downham Market to Denver Sluice, there's some boards beside a rather nice pub that explain all the hydro engineering since the 1600's. I'm a bit hazy on detail as it was so long ago, but they really got interesting, particularly after he 1953 flood. I've a notion that they did a really nifty bit of thinking and discovered that they could raise the level of a relief channel (for some reason 150mm is in my mind), bore some tunnels into the ground and supply somewhere distant with lots of fresh water. Sorry about the vagueness, but it was so long ago that I was there.
Great pub though for Sunday lunch. You could arrive by car or boat as it had a car park and a jetty. The pub cat would jump on the tables out of the way of any of two cockerels strutting their big evil spurs across the floor
Loved the outro music 😅
Hovercrafts, there's the solution, just fly over the water, just don't let Clarkson, Hammond & May build it though... :P
Oh the music at the end credits! 🤣😂😅 You have outdone yourself John 👍 I suspect this bridge will never happen too, as it’s probably going to be deemed not ‘economically viable’ or some such. It’s a standard tactic: fend (close to a pun there) off the rake and torch bearing hordes of disgruntled non-London types by wasting a sufficiently large sum of public money in conducting a ‘feasibility study’ that will serve to act as a sincere effort at building the bridge without ever actually having to even bother planning anything. Or so a cynic might say. Not me obviously 🙄
Have a splendid Easter old chap 👍🍀 🪺 ➕ 🐇
That was interesting.
The problem with building a bridge is that a really big boat comes along and knocks it over.
Hi Jon.
It's great to see that every time I watch one of your fascinating videos, your subscriber numbers have increased by 1000, now at 127K. Last week 126K.
I remember watching your video when you had reached 100K subscribers and how elated you were.
Love your channel and really look forward to your uploads.
200K by the end of 2024?
Fascinating report! Excellent production quality!!
Might it actually be cheaper to close the road entirely and compulsory purchase the village and have the residents move. Seems a bit barmy to me.