This season, so far around 35,000 native trees and shrubs have been planted, and 57,000 square metres of grassland have been seeded to transform the bare slopes and cuttings of the relief road.
Most recently, Hawthorn, Blackthorn and various wild rose species have been planted on the Lorton Lane green bridge, and Hazel, Oak, Ash, Wild Cherry and Willow species are being planted alongside the road in the Lorton area.
The conservation area being established as part of the Weymouth Relief Road project will become an extension to the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Lorton Meadows Nature Reserve.
Two of the fields have changed this summer from bare land into wildflower meadows.
Last autumn the grass was cut and wildflower hay from the MoD rifle range at Chickerell was strewn across the field to provide wildflower seeds for this season, and a further sowing of native grass and wildflower seed was applied.
This autumn, now there has finally been enough rain to germinate the seeds, the plants have started to grow and flower. In the picture you can see the yellows of Fleabane and Bristly Ox-tongue and the white of Mayweed. Most of the rarer species will flower next year.
Surfacing of the road has gone well so far. In the left photograph you can see the first strip of tarmac through the Littlemoor Gap.
This weekend there will be some work to ‘trim’ the rest of the surface to the correct level in preparation for more tarmac next week.
Hours of work will be from 8am to 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday.
Elsewhere in the south of the scheme, chalk stabilisation to create the foundation layer for the road is almost complete.
After the chalk is stabilised a thin layer is put on top of it to protect the surface, this is the black layer you can see in the right photograph taken south of the Lorton Lane bridge.
August is a key month for the project – final drainage is being put in, and we aim to have the tarmac in place from the Ridgeway to Littlemoor bridge by the end of the month.
We will have finished Chapel Lane bridge, Southdown Ridge bridge and Lorton Lane bridge (apart from the final planting of trees and shrubs, which will all start in early winter). We’ll also have finished all the work that can currently be done on the Ridgeway bridge.
Work is well underway on the remaining four roundabouts for the scheme, and the picture shows the smallest of these – the roundabout leading to the Park and Ride.
We’re also finishing major earth moving for the project. ‘Mount Lodmoor’, the large pile of earth you can see in this picture, is the final cover layer for Lodmoor landfill and the Park and Ride site.
June was a good month for the project, with fine weather meaning the bulk earth moving for the project has been finished.
During July the earthworks will be ‘trimmed’ to get the final levels for embankments and roundabouts correct. The main areas for this are Ridgeway, the balancing ponds at Littlemoor and the southern part of the scheme by Manor Railway bridge, Two Mile Coppice and Lodmoor. (more…)
The Lorton Lane bridge is now open for traffic, although some finishing works are being completed on either side of the new section of road.
It does stand out at the moment but soon top soil will soon be spread on its sides, which will be seeded and then planted later this autumn to create a green bridge.
Now that the bridge is open, some of the last bulk earthworks for the scheme can be completed – removal of the old Lorton Lane and the clay beneath the bridge.
Lorton Lane bridge backfill is going well, with Lorton Lane due to be diverted over the bridge during May.
In this photo looking through the bridge towards Two Mile Coppice you can see the layer of chalk that has been put down and will be stabilised to form the base of the road under the tarmac.
Dry weather means that we can get on with completing footpaths and cycleways for the scheme. Kerbings have been laid on the new footpath and cycleway from Upwey Station to the new Southdown Ridge bridge.
This route should be open to the public in early May, meaning that people will no longer have to walk around the diversion on Southdown Ridge. A little further south, the Lorton Lane bridge should also be open in May.
Lorton Lane looks quite different from last week, now that the arches for the new Lorton Lane bridge are in place.
This view is looking south down the line of the relief road towards Two Mile Coppice, with Portland in the background. Over the next two weeks the arches will be ‘stitched’ together at the top with reinforcing steel and concrete. Once that work has been done and made waterproof we can start to backfill the outside of the arches with earth and form the new section of Lorton Lane that will run over the top of the bridge.
Work to construct Lorton Lane bridge is moving on, with the concrete support on one side of the bridge poured and the other ready to be poured soon.
The new bridge is slightly south of the existing road, and will connect to footpaths and bridleways in Lorton Meadows Nature Reserve, which in turn connect to Southdown Ridge, Two Mile Coppice and the conservation area near Horselynch Plantation being created as part of the relief road project.
The bridge will be completed ‘off line’ and then connected to the new alignment of Lorton Lane.
