Everyone would undoubtedly agree that we are having unparalleled levels of rainfall this year and that this is testing the limits of our current drainage systems (and indeed our ever willing greens team), none more so than on the 6th,8th,9th.

While we can all speculate what might be the cause, we have started investigations to conclusively establish what is causing these worsened surface water conditions and the overflowing of the drainage ditch and main pond on the 5th.

What seems clear to the team, is that we must first make our drainage solutions in that area be capable of REMOVING more water from the course THAN FALLS ON IT - which they aren't at the moment. Until we have done that, we will not be able to clearly see which on course drains are blocked, need supplementing, or rerouting.

Ground conditions prevent taking any heavy digging machinery on the course, so we have hired a self powered pump (300litres/min) to see what happens if we give gravity a hand and actively pump water along the open ditch that runs alongside the left of the 10th Fairway and hence off the property.

The attached video shows the early signs of progress we are making even with a modest pump. But it's clear already that a larger flow rate pump would help our understanding better - as a result we are buying a larger output pump (1300litres/min). which will arrive this Thursday.

We will keep members up to date with progress we make here, and elsewhere.

Have a look at this video to see what we mean.

The 10th Ditch video