Dom Davis (The Blog)

I’ve written before about how dangerous all this nature I walk through on my way too and from work can be, but Friday provided a reminder of just how deadly it can be.

I was on the final leg of my walk in, a part where there are some rather old and large trees, when I found the path blocked. A rather lathe bough (branch just doesn’t cut it here) had broken off the tree at some point in the last 14 hours or so, and come crashing down on the path.

Oh, you’d have to be phenomenally unlucky to be caught out by this event (unless you precipitated the event by swinging on the soon go be shed bough) but something that size is going sting if it falls on you.

7 hours later the council had cleared the area leaving just the ruddy great gash in the side of the tree as evidence of the event. I wonder what caused it since there wasn’t any high winds or inclement weather Thursday night.

Placid though “Riverside walk” may sound my daily commute is fraught with peril and obstacles. If it’s not Killer bees, renegade cyclists or loose canines who are patently not on leads (despite the signs) it’s the trees. Use of the start (or end, depending which way you’re going) of the walk involves navigation round some rather lovely, rather low hanging branches. Not so lovely when it’s wet, the grass is muddy and walking through or under the branches is asking for a drenching. Of course today it’s dry and the council seem to have tidied up the path during the day, including trimming the trees somewhat, making the problem much less pronounced than it was when I saw them this morning. Bloody typical

You must be at lease this short to use this path

With thanks to the random lady who has no idea the person behind was surreptitiously photographing her ducking in order to get an idea of scale