The balancing pond opposite Littlemoor shops is indeed fairly small, but so is the catchment that it collects runoff from. This balancing pond doesn’t collect any runoff from the shopping centre, which has a drainage system in place already. What it does take is runoff from 650 metres of the new section of Littlemoor Road . Some of the field drains to the north are also diverted into this drainage system. The pond discharges into the existing Littlemoor drainage system, which has sufficient capacity to take the extra runoff from the road and always did take the field drainage. This pond is not quite excavated down to its final level as yet.

The very large catchment of Bincombe Valley nearby is dealt with by the balancing ponds at Littlemoor, which are being expanded as part of the relief road works.

The Chalbury basin pond at Preston already has an outfall system and we don’t modify this as part of the relief road works but we have increased the amount of storage available at Chalbury before discharge. There are two outfall systems at Chalbury pond. One is designed to discharge at a controlled rate to avoid downstream flooding, and the second is an overflow weir at a higher level to cope with major rainfall events. The Chalbury system is designed to cope with a 1 in 120 year storm event, and then oversized by 20%.

Drainage pipes have a screen across the entrance, and smaller pipes can be jetted to remove blockages. Larger pipes can be inspected by camera and manually cleared if necessary.

Regards

Peter Harris

The best place to look at a simplified map of the cycleways is on the back page of the last edition of the Route newsletter.

For the most part, the cycleway is on the railway side (northbound) of the road and is one metre away from the edge of the road. From Ridgeway to Dorchester it’s on the southbound side of the road.

The cycleway joins up with each of the bridges at: Lorton Lane, Southdown Ridge, Littlemoor, Chapel Lane, Bincombe and Ridgeway.

At the southern end of the scheme it joins up with the cycleway around the rugby club and into the Lodmoor Country Park.

There’s a new subway at the Morrison’s roundabout and an underpass under the road at Two Mile Coppice, or you can cycle over the railway bridge.

Also, there’s a cycleway on either side of the new Littlemoor Road.

I’ve tried to follow the plan (PDF on http://www.dorsetforyou.com/index.jsp?articleid=3463) but I’m having trouble working out how the cycleway/bridleway/footpaths all work as part of the road.

Is there a better plan that shows all these parts in relation to the road? As in, what side of the road they are on, how they cross the road etc?

Particularly the Lorton Lane area, how it joins/leaves the road – and how it’ll work by the new roundabout/park and ride behind Morrisons.

Thanks