‘It’s been beyond difficult’: earthworks of HS2 take toll on Chilterns residents | HS2

MArgaret Bance looked at his chalet window on a stroke of wheat and small cops. Now when she opens her curtains every morning, the rural valley between Great Missenden and Wendover is dominated by concrete and HS2 earthworks.

The men dressed in orange and their yellow diggers and their waste build cuttings and viaducts to take the high -speed railway on its way through a band of the Exceptional Natural Beauty area (AONB), now known as the national landscape.

The London railroad in Birmingham is the largest construction site for Great Britain, a linear earthworm stretch of almost 140 miles long, including tunnels, largely visible on the satellite view of Google Maps as a lively beige scar in the middle of England.

By combining satellite imagery with additional research, the Guardian calculates that the green space lost in the development of HS2 in the national landscape amounts to 252 hectares.

In the coming years, once the terrains are over, a large part of this devastation will be referred. Construction compounds, temporary car parks and temporary factories will be dismantled and the land rehabilitated. But this part of the national landscape of Chiltern is irrevocably changed.

“It’s cruel. It’s disgusting, ”explains BUnce. Born in a neighboring village when it was a sleepy and leafy corner of the Buckinghashire, she is a farmer’s girl now married to a farmer. “If my father or my stepfather returned, they would not believe it, none of them,” she said.

Grandry BUnce began to cultivate here in 1933. If the name seems familiar, BUNCE, the farmer married in Fantastic M. Fox: Roald Dahl, who was a local resident, borrowed their family name for one of the vile characters of his very appreciated children’s book.

The fictitious BUNCE has dug a hill in pursuit of Mr. Fox. Over the past five years, real bunces have seen HS2 do a little more in the Misbourne Chalk Stream valley.

“It was more difficult,” said Peter Bnce, Margaret’s husband. “The last six months have been hell.” He wishes to have sold the farm before the construction start.

While most of the Chiltern national landscape was spared by a 10 -mile tunnel through chalk, the line explodes from the ground to South Heath and follows the valley between Great Missenden and Wendover on just over four miles.

The inhabitants deposited 344 official petitions with the Parliament for the tunnel to be extended as regards Wendover, but it was told that it would be too expensive. Instead, the railroad is above the ground in the valley, in a cutting section 14 meters deep and more than two viaducts. When he passes Wendover, he entered a “green tunnel” of 0.9 mile placed in a deep cup, which will then be landscape, says HS2, with a mixture of meadows and wood.

HS2 has taken 6.5 hectares (16 acres) of BUNCES land and, like many farmers along the route, they now find their fields divided to the range by the line. From the lost area, 3.5 hectares were taken in “temporary possession” by HS2, which means that the land could be returned – after a few years – to the landowner (although HS2 can always decide to buy it compulsorily on a later date). HS2 has planted trees on the ground which he has “temporarily” taken from the BUNCES, which makes it green, to compensate for losses elsewhere, but also to make the land more difficult to cultivate again.

The most prominent loss of greenery of this section was the destruction of more than a third of Jones’ Hill Wood, a fragment of 1.8 hectare of old wood. The activists built huts in the trees in wood in 2021. A challenge to the legality of the destruction of wood, relating to its rare perches of bat, reached the high court, but HS2 prevailed.

Another loss was 75 meters from Ditch de Grim, a monument from the Iron Age crossing the Chilterns. Although it is less than 150 meters initially planned, the Buckinghashire Council said that it “bitterly regretted” destruction.

Residents are disturbed not only by the loss of characteristics of ancient landscape or peaceful green view, although the valley also contains pylons and the animated road A413. Years of construction are wreaking havoc.

Roger Turner lives 300 meters from where the line comes out of the Chilterns. His farm is divided, with most of his 52 hectares on the other side of the tracks of his farm. The trains will run 14 meters under his house, in a cup. “We will not see it, but we will hear it,” he says. “But I could be deaf when the trains work.”

During the field, said Turner, the disturbance caused sudden floods where there was never a flood. Water ran on its fields. Now the cut has been dug, he says, the water arrives there. His sister Sarah Turner says that during the heavy rains “the ditches run with water – and it is not clear water”.

Roger says: “At the beginning, I thought we could live with it. We had no idea of ​​the impact of trucks. I would recommend anywhere near an infrastructure project – out.”

According to HS2, apart from a strip approximately 19 meters wide (narrower than a typical three -way highway in each direction), everything will be virtivated. Through the national landscape of Chiltern, only 795 meters from the railway will be visible – the two viaducts – with the rest of the track in a tunnel or a cup.

HS2 has created 4.1 hectares of new woods directly linked to Jones hill and 20 hectares of new woods in all chilterns, using native to large species. In some places, it has transferred an old wooded floor, accelerating the creation of new woods.

A spokesperson said: “The land next to the railroad will either be returned to farmers, landscaped to form false reimbursements (to cut noise) or used to create new wildlife habitats. When the railroad is in a cut, the sides of the cut will be covered with grass, which may not be glamorous but which are precious for wild flowers and inverbers. ” “”

On the issue of floods, HS2 stressed that it had created large “mitigation ponds” which capture runoff during strong precipitation and slowly strengthen filtered water in natural streams during the following weeks. “The system’s ability is designed to manage strong normal precipitation and we have the right EA [Environment Agency] consents in place, “said the spokesperson.

HS2 also noted that the A413 floods in the valley had been a long -standing problem, prior to HS2, and was the responsibility for the premises Highways Authority.

The HS2 earthworks stadium – Maximum destruction – should end in the Chilterns in 2027. Experts predict that the high -speed high -speed railway will not open before the years after its completion date scheduled in 2033.

Some nearby residents sold HS2 and moved away. Many of those who have stayed in the Misbourne valley are desperate that the construction work ends and still has trouble accepting the daily disturbance of their routines – dust or grass seed closings that blow up earthworks – and their landscape radically changed.

“We have to live with it now,” says Margaret Bance. “We can’t do anything about it. Pete was born in this house. I took control of the farm when he was 13 years old because his father died of a stroke. He died a little from agriculture now. If it was not for our son, his heart is gone.”

The Guardian’s Green to Grey team includes Pamela Duncan, Zeke Hunter-Green, Tural Ahmedzade and Sandra Laville with additional reports from Rachel Keenan, Raphael Boyd, Olivia Lee, Yassin El-Moudden, Gracie Daw, Matthew Holmes, Mariam Amini, Gabriel Smith, Dominic Kendrick and Emma Russell

To find out more, visit Greentogrey.eu

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