Pingos or not?

A hectic day has left me a trifle frustrated. I dropped Helena off at the station early this morning and then went to the Brunel Goods Shed nearby, which we Trustees of Stroud Preservation Trust are responsible for. We have our Trustees meeting tonight and one of the main issues is the state of the newly surfaced car park and the potholes which you can see here.

We commissioned a major renovation of the building last autumn and that included the installation of the roller shutters in all five entrances, the new external platform and its railings, which I have blipped before here.

This picture is to show the repaired car park's surface after we insisted their first attempt be replaced, for a number of reasons. The proper material according to the architects was then laid down, but it was done at the very beginning of the extremely hard freeze before Christmas. Why these potholes have 'surfaced' is the key agenda item tonight.

There are several factors. I have my own thesis, which I learnt about through reading about landscape history in Oliver Rackham's marvellous tome, The History of the Countryside. He described 'Pingos', which are surface features formed during periods of permafrost, when ponds are formed by the upward pressure of the frozen water in the ground, forming circular banks around the feature and a deep central hole. All of these described features can be found here, in miniature.

It doesn't matter whether I am correct or not, but I do like to understand what happens. We have to work out who is responsible for this useless surface which we have paid a lot of money for, and whether we should expect any of the contractors to remedy the situation. This could become our 'Dombey and Son'.

Wish us well tonight please, and I hope tomorrow might provide a better blip. Today it is a practical issue and I haven't got time for anything else. Sorry.