UKH

It's the 39th anniversary today so I took myself down to the place where it happened. I was there last year but a day later and there was nothing on the memorial stone to commemorate the anniversary. This time I placed a few wild flowers that I'd collected nearby - someone had already been there before me and done likewise. I was living in Lancaster when it happened and well remember the reports but it was only later I realised the true horror and destruction. For anyone unfamiliar with what happened there is plenty online to be found. The pumping station was rebuilt and the location is as peaceful and serene as it can get. Without knowing, it would be hard to imagine the scene back then. The only sounds today were the river flowing by, birdsong and wind in the trees and sheep with their lambs. It's always mixed emotions and thoughts when I'm down that way - sorrow for the victims and gratitude that I'm alive and have had the years that they didn't.

I'd never heard of that, but had a google.  What a tragedy.

Thanks for this - I remember the disaster from the time but I’d forgotten the sheer scale. 

That's a grim story I was completely unaware of but the report is a fascinating read https://www.icheme.org/media/13697/the-abbeystead-explosion.pdf

jk

The reasons for the explosion are fascinating. A mix of geology and human fallibility at foreseeing risks. Part of the horror is that the visitors were there to be reassured that the scheme (to pump drinking water from the Lune into the Wyre) wouldn't increase the flood risk where they lived in St. Michael's.

Remember the Wray disaster in the same neck of the woods. Don't think anyone died but mind blowing at the time. 

My great aunt and uncle lost their home in the Wray flood. The tale of how she escaped out of the kitchen window are stuff of family legend. They did very well out of the flood fund, they lost their two up two down cottage and got a three bedroom bungalow with a big garden.

She lived to be 104 and is buried in Wray Churchyard, as is her sister, my Gran, who also lived to be 104. Flood was in 1967 which is way before my time, but the village has changed so much since I visited regularly in the 80s.

Wray's another place where you'd never guess anything horrible ever happened although there is a panel on the landscaped area where the cottages once stood. There's a nice tearoom by the bridge and it's great to sit above the river. I think Dunsop Bridge over the moors also got clobbered by the same cloudburst in '67? What with climate change and the increase in flooding events it must be a worry.

It gets very busy when the scarecrow festival is on. I stay clear!

Nice thought...but please don't pick wildflowers, even for a memorial.  It's illegal and unnecessary

Nice that the memorial stone is more about His Grace the Duke of Westminster than the victims. 

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/mar/16/rules-picking-wild-flowers

Also disagree about unnecessary.

If everyone supplied graves and memorials with wildflowers, we'd have none growing.  So don't.  It's another case of too many people making it unviable (see vans etc etc) 

Get a sense of proportion? I plucked a few bluebell stalks (on their last legs), a few daisy and buttercup stems - all from the vast swathes growing about. I also liberated a couple of rhododendron flowers from His Grace's verge. Nothing was uprooted or destroyed and no great hordes saw me and completed the 'destruction'. I think I may have chewed on a garlic flower or two?

Yes, that does jar with me too. There's a 'new' duke in town and maybe with the 40th anniversary next year it would be time for a change. There is a plaque with names in the the church at St. Michael's where most of the victims lived and some are buried. I saw it last year and it's a really nice old church.

Of course that's what everyone who does it says - "just a few".  Same with lots of things

So you think nobody at all should have a van then? Or do anything else that might scale up to become harmful? That's the logic. 

I think vans have tipped into being quite antisocial.

I was thinking more of the tragedy of the commons. 

Or many species of animal.

So, yes, I do think there are some things that you shouldn't do because if everyone does it buggers things for all of us. Leaving wildflowers be is a pretty easy and obvious one

It was dark in the middle of the afternoon with multiple tentacles of lightening snaking out along the underside of the clouds. And that was before it started raining. 

Sarge.

Yes, PC Moacs?

Here are those kids I picked up for making daisy chains. Shall I put them in the cells?

Excellent! Put them with the class caught disturbing sticklebacks at the pond. When we get the parents in we'll think up something to charge them with. Now that we're free of EU law we can really protect the country. Thank Boris we've got more hard working police officers than the last two hundred years. Well done!

Thanks, Seargent Jobsworth!

One more thing, Moacs there's a  itreport just come in of a family seen stealing sea shells on the beach. Possibly pretty pebbles as well.

I'm on it, Sarge! Who do these people think they are? If everyone did this the whole coastline would disappear!

Good man, Moacs!

.....@.....

Sometimes it's better to say nothing.

Lol.  I started off trying to be nice!

Always interesting to see different opinions though

But do we actually have a problem in the UK with wildflowers being over-picked? If not, then the demand is clearly not enough to cause an issue, so no need to be worried out it.

We would have if everyone that thinks "those are pretty"  picked them - people like me for example.  The demand is latent and only not a problem because most of us decide that wild flowers are better left growing rather than picked.

It's inconsiderate, antisocial and selfish to remove something lovely that everyone can otherwise enjoy.  Whatever happened to "take nothing but photos"

Actually, that principle - being considerate and self-restrained for the communal good - is quite important to me, whether it's respecting access agreements, not dropping litter/dog shit, avoiding flying, or not picking wild flowers.

But others have different values.  Hey ho.

On a thread like this there probably isn't a way to make your point nicely enough that it won't come across as mean spirited. So it's better to say nothing.

Working for the Consulting Engineers on the Lancashire Conjunctive Use Scheme was my first job after leaving University. Felt like a 'job for life' when I got my feet under the desk there. I'll never escape the shock I felt when I heard the news of the explosion. It felt incomprehensible. Over the years, I've regularly cycled along the Quernmore valley and I can still see (and hear) in my mind all the places of so many fun times being involved in your first huge civil project all now completely marred by the terrible disaster.

And the rest is history.

E