As of next Wednesday 25th November the road through the park to Whitecliff road should re-open, as will the vehicle entrance at the East Gate entrance to the park by the civic centre. This means that all three park gates will be open again to vehicles with the morning closure between 6am – 10am Monday to Saturday being reintroduced.
There will continue to be some occasional localised closures for short periods whilst the work continues to lay the final surfacing, plant trees along the avenue, install and connect the new lighting columns, install bollards and other street furniture.
Please note that the Keyhole Bridge closure experiment continues and remains under review and open to public comment: see here for more detail and be sure to have your say.
The heritage textured surfacing has started to be laid this week, providing a high quality look and feel to the paths in important areas. This system lays down resin on top of the tarmac surface and then casts aggregate across the top.
The tarmac resurfacing around the cricket pitch and cycle track has had to be put on hold due to the incredibly high water table. Some base course of tarmac was laid a number of weeks ago but the continued heavy rainfall and the inability to effectively drain this water anywhere makes any further works impossible at this time. More background on that in this article.
To further highlight the conditions across the park, this week the contractors have had to re-lay some sections of kerbs because they were literally floating on saturated ground. All grass areas are incredibly soft and we really appreciate people staying on the main walkways where possible. Thank you for your on-going patience during the construction works.
Recent photos below of the improvements, from the top, heritage surfacing being laid; new trees planted; finished heritage surfacing; bottom, Whitecliff junction improvement works and saturated ground.
