Tooling along our crumbling East Cliff here in the Millionaires' Playground yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to see TDC's contractors installing the new, permanent (hallelujah!) cliff top fencing in readiness for reopening. And that on a bank holiday!Not such a pleasant surprise, however, was seeing the state of the give way sign at the top of Marina Road which appears to have, er, given way to one of their vehicles. I presume Kent Highways' contractors will now have to come along and straighten it up. Still, in the words of the late, great, lovely Flanders and Swann 'it all makes work for the working man to do'. Unless, of course, it's designed to be a new, Pisa-like tourist initiative. There again, The Leaning Give Way Sign Of Ramsgate doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?
4 comments:
They had Civic Pride,
and a can do attitude.
Now we have Civic Slough,
and a cant be bothered attitude.
Richard the thing I find most bizarre about this project is that they are repairing this huge cliff wall from the top down and it seems that they will address the problems with the foundations last.
The problems with the foundations are that the floor level of the old Pleasurama building was a 1.5 meters above the level of the new car park so there is a gap at the bottom of the wall.
That'd be a problem with having all those books for reference but no practical experience, I'd suppose.
They've had long enough to think about it. Surely they must have it sussed by now.
Lucy I wouldn’t want you to think I just sit here in my ivory tower and am loathe to engage in hands on experience when it comes to the safety of the Pleasurama project, or that I have any difficulty in climbing their fencing despite my advancing years. So far they have only had the nerve to expose about 10 meters of the foundations, god alone knows what they will find if they uncover the rest. My correspondence with the various parties involved in the project runs to hundreds of pages, however at risk of spamming the blog a small sample below.
From one of the cliff engineers to me
The foundations of the facade is on a mass concrete base some 2 metres thick and founded on what would appear to be good sound chalk. I shall be very surprised if there is any cause for concern.
From my reply to him
The only bit I was able to get really close to the footings was at the buttress of portal 19 it didn’t look too good to me I managed to insert a wire probe further than seemed ok. Anyway I hope you are right
From the cliff engineers rely to me
I had a look yesterday at your area of concern, and you are correct in what you are seeing is a shallow foundation of concrete which has chalk below. This is only for the blockwork feature and is only exposed for a length of 5 metres approx
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