Perhaps, it’s because most of us live in urban settings that makes rivers, streams, and brooks so fascinating.
Great stretches of some of our most interesting rivers have long ago gone underground, briefly to appear into daylight before disappearing once more, leaving their course unknown to most of us.
And even out in the suburbs and the countryside the most humble of water courses can suddenly be lost or have undergone a degree of rationalization, turning them from twisty, turny, lazy streams which wind through natural surroundings into uniformly straight lines surrounded by flat cultivated land, or worse still made to flow through steep channels where the backs rise like cliffs on either side.
Of course, I understand why in the interests of flood prevention this should be the case, but some of their magic has been taken away.
All of which brings me to the Sinderland Brook, which I first came across when Andy sent over a couple of pictures of the water course at Timperley, and which according to one source is “an important waterway and wildlife corridor …[extending] through heart of Trafford from Smiths Field to join the Red Brook in Partington”.*
And it does feature on a number of rambling and natural heritage sites, along with seasonal alerts about flooding.
But what really caught my eye was a report posted fifteen years ago, which describes plans to restore 1.8 km of the book and its floodplain which had been channelized in the late 1960s by the water Authority.**
At which point I have no intention of stealing the details from the report, which you can find by following the link.
I have yet to find out whether Andy’s stretch was included, but his pictures offer up conflicting interpretations.
And that is it.
Location; the Sinderland Brook, as it goes under the canal Timperley/Altrincham,
Pictures; the Sinderland Brook, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson
*Sinderland Brook, Heritage Trees, https://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/sites/default/files/AT_Sinderland%20Brook.pdf
**Sinderland Brook, https://www.therrc.co.uk/case_studies/sinderland%20brook%20issue%2020.pdf
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