Tufa springs

Wednesday 30th March 2022

We went over to Combe Mill to meet up with David. He is a hydrologist and took us around the area explaining about the area. The Evenlode has a set of springs - and three of them are at Combe. They are a wonder! the water comes out an ochre colour because of oxidisation. One that we looked at was pretty slow - we could see a few bubbles. The other that we looked at was gushing out. Do take a look at the videos below. I took one of the surface and David took an underwater one - turn up the volume!

We had a go at flying his drone which makes it so much easier to see what is happening in the landscape. This is a picture of the other spring. You can see the line from the trees (where the spring is) to the river. That is a drainage channel that was put in historically - it drains the water from the spring straight to the river stopping the natural water flow that would have happened. David has permission from the landowner to block the drain and revert the spring to its natural form allowing it to flood part of the field. All he needs is some man power - our Duke of Edinburgh team - I could not be more excited to be involved in this - unfortunately we cant do it until later in the year so watch this space. It is one of those fairly simple things that will immediately transform the area - we will make sure we have before and after pictures.