please empty your brain below
For heaven's sake, a classic case when you should ring 999. Theft in progress. He might make off but he is going to be pretty easy to spot. Well worth the police making a quick trawl of the area.

Pedantic of Purley | 08.04.17 - 7:24 a.m. | #

Metal theft? - odd, the scrap value would be negligible, it's possible he was creating access for planned nefarious purposes later on.

Still anon | 08.04.17 - 8:16 a.m. | #

Should've regaled him with bus stop M complaints until he fell asleep.

Jimmy | 08.04.17 - 8:28 a.m. | #

This is why I keep the non-emergency numbers for the various police forces I may be in stored in my phone. Shame the one I've used most (Devon & Cornwall) is an 0845 number that's charged on mobiles...

RG | 08.04.17 - 8:47 a.m. | #

The police non-emergency number has recently become 101, which is pretty memorable. And while the rules for 999 do say quite clearly that it includes a crime in progress, I think I too would have felt - perhaps wrongly - slightly anxious that I might be getting in the way of some other life-threatening issue.

Malcolm | 08.04.17 - 8:54 a.m. | #

Someone "creating access" does not go to the trouble of acquiring and using a bike trailer - the bits removed would be flung aside.

Meanwhile, back at the not-yet-Graveney, I admire the persistence required to find the whereabouts of, and travel to, all the bits of the dotted-line where the river (/ditch) sees a bit of daylight. It looks as if this one does not even have any sections suitable for damming or paddling in, which is a shame.

Malcolm | 08.04.17 - 9:21 a.m. | #

Was the 'bike trailer' made out of similar stuff that made up the fence?, he might have been one of those 'urban recyclers'.

Given the constricted nature of the channels and tunnels further upstream, the residents of those houses whose gardens back onto the brook will have little to worry about in terms of flooding.

Still anon | 08.04.17 - 10:32 a.m. | #

I guess these days things fall off the back of a bike trailer rather than a lorry!! Recession, innit.
Wish they'd pick up all the fly-tipped mattresses and furniture to take to the scrap-dealers instead!

I look forward to tomorrow's foray into Sahf London.

Cornish Cockney | 08.04.17 - 11:04 a.m. | #

still anon and flooding: My observations suggest that whether an area floods has a lot to do with what is downstream of the area, and rather less with the upstream situation. Leave the bath plug in, and you can produce a flood quite soon even if the tap is only providing a trickle.

Malcolm | 08.04.17 - 3:17 p.m. | #

Thanks for that link to the Croydon Canal map on Google Maps -- I shall eventually explore it on foot. There's another detailed set of maps and an explanation here http://londoncanals.uk/2010/01/07/the-croydon-canal-20-route-maps/

But a more likely cause for its lack of success is that it had 28 locks in 15km/9 miles. That's a lot of locking. Canal users tend to plan their journeys on the basis of 4mph plus 15 minutes per lock, so that means it would have taken around nine hours to do the whole stretch from Croydon basin to the Surrey Canal. No wonder it failed.

Alan Burkitt-Gray | 08.04.17 - 5:23 p.m. | #

On this 1890s OS map from the marvellous National Library of Sctlond site the course of the Norbury Brook is shown for about a mile south of the Selhurst railway depot:
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.3822&lon=-0.0775&layers=163&b=6

Beckenham Boy | 08.04.17 - 8:08 p.m. | #

Fabulous, thanks. Looks like I should have started my walk up at Addiscombe Railway Park.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 08.04.17 - 8:28 p.m. | #

... and I've found this, which has a detailed description of the brook's original source:
http://www.malvernwaters.com/nationalparks.asp?search=yes&p=7&id=185

Beckenham Boy | 08.04.17 - 9:29 p.m. | #

Ooh! My own little corner of Sarf Lahndan, at least until last autumn when we decamped to Sussex. While I lived in London I liked to feel a connection with my local river. First it was the Effra in Brixton, then the Effra again in Gipsy Hill, then the Wandle in Croydon old town, and lastly the Norbury Brook.

Beckenham Boy: wow, that's a great article. I was going to mention myself that the Edith's Streets website states that the Norbury Brook rises near the Lower Addiscombe Road, but yours is a far better source :)

David F | 10.04.17 - 9:39 a.m. | #

P.S. The final line of that article is pure Croydon:

"In 2003, however, fifty years after it was filled in, Thornton Heath Pond was once again flowing with water, thanks to a new water feature funded by Croydon Council's Smarter Croydon initiative. It was removed shortly afterwards."

David F | 10.04.17 - 9:44 a.m. | #











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