Oh yes! History is full of the names of famous Explorers, searching for the source…

• 1804 Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark (source of the Missouri River & also the astonishing Lewis and Clark Expedition)
• 1856 Captain Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke (source of the Nile)
• 1866 David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley (source of the Nile)

…and so, in honour of these & other, similar noble exploits, on Sunday 26 March 2017 your mapper selflessly set forth into the wildlands of the heights of Gedling Country Park to discover the source of …, erm, Ouse Dyke (I do wish that they could have given it a bit of a more romantic name) and …, erm, got my Clarks muddy. So yes, no trouble nor expense shared to nobly & selflessly bring the wonders of Gedling slag heap to your door.

A short length of Ouse Dyke was marked up in those heights on the Nottingham City Adopted Highways Register, and I’d noticed obvious signs of a bridge across Lambley Lane that should contain Ouse Dyke (although now culverted), plus manhole covers for a culvert North-South across Lambley Lane Recreation Ground, so I was confident of a result.

Here are some highlights of that mapping session, using my new-new smartphone for the first time:–

A northern basin (mapping), fed by culverts & natural drainage from the surrounding hills. As best as I can tell, this is NOT a source for Ouse Dyke, although goodness knows what Severn Trent does if the rainfall is too large (correction: see later diary with photos of the overflow channel that allows the upper, northern basin to drain into the lower, southern basin and the way that the latter basin overflows into a culvert that is at the head of Ouse Dyke):–

As you can tell by the lack of fencing, Gedling Council is rather Spartan towards it’s children rather than treating them as soft Athenians. That also shows in the way that it only warns you of the drop as you are about to fall, and the lack of a lifebuoy in the Lifebuoy holder.

South of the Northern Basin is (surprise surprise) a Southern Basin (mapping). This one boasts (at least one) swan & ducks (the northern one only had swimming dogs when I was there):–

Having become an expert on Flood Lagoons, these two look like Retention lagoons, in that there are zero pumping mechanisms in sight. I assume that any excess will have to drain to the west into the trees (not so: see Part #3) (to the North, East & South are high-parts formed from spoil dumped from the now-closed Gedling Colliery). Some of the efforts to safely drain & re-green the slag-heap show in the next few pictures, each taken from further to the south & east:–

At the time I thought that I had hit Ouse Dyke pay-dirt but, seeing the pictures in the context of the map, it was clear that these all drained into the Southern Basin, so maybe not.

The amount of efforts taken here by Severn Trent are extreme, and it was viscerally clear to me that Water Engineers such as those employed by ST have taken on-board the horrible lessons of Aberfan from 1966 (a coal slag-heap in Wales, built upon a stream, which washed an avalanche of muck down the hill and into Pantglas Junior School directly below it, killing 116 children and 28 adults).

The following stream seems most likely to directly be the modern source of Ouse Dyke (I have put it on the map but it is hidden by trees & needs proper tracking). It is south & below the southern Basin and is heading south-east. It is a handful of metres north-east of the Information Map (mapping), which itself is a few metres north of where the abandoned mineral railway, older hiking track and proposed Gedling Access Road all pass:–

Addendum 1: I’ve changed the mapping from waterway=stream to waterway=ditch, as we are dealing with an artificial drain created by Severn Trent rather than a natural stream leaping merrily from rock to rock.
Addendum 2: the following note has been added to the mineral railway: > 2017-Mar: Google Earth shows one (sometimes two) rail-tracks on the land; they must have added them afterwards, as none exist.

In the North Recreation Ground there are two manhole-covers (only the second is pictured below, which is where two culverted streams join below ground):–

It is perfectly reasonable to say that a culvert passes between them and, seeing as continuing the line of that culvert towards town that there is a bridge that crosses Lambley Lane (below), I also believe that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the culvert passes through that bridge across to the other side (although today the ground shows dry, the bridge is at the lowest part of that section of Lambley Lane and therefore the most natural place for a stream to flow out of the higher ground to the north):–

Further mapping on the continuing line of that culvert, plus it’s appearance as a stream, will have to wait until I actually map that area (coming soon). However, there is a final oddity within the Recreation Ground…

The photo below was taken on November 27, 2016 and is of a stream that rises within what is now Mapperley Golf Course and exits into a culvert operated by Severn Trent Water at the southern-most point of the Course:–

That culvert was originally found within a NPE map & transferred onto OSM many years ago. After someone raised doubts about it, I spent all the months between November & now trying to find someone to speak about it, but no-one answered my knocks on their door. It finished on NPE within the Recreation Area, close to the southern Manhole cover. I think that it merges with that culvert (but have not moved it).

The final item is to make note of my re-mapping of a "historic:waterway"="stream" which is mapped but never shows (due to missing tags). Originally it met with & combined with the NPE culvert, and it looks like it is supposed to come from the drain further to the north. I’ve:

• disconnected it from the NPE Culvert
• connected it with the northern man-hole instead
• have given it culvert tags instead of stream tags
  (there isn’t a stream that wanders across all the football pitches)

And that is the end of the search for the source of Ouse Dyke. It seems very much like it is a combo of a stream coming down from (what is now) Gedling Country Park and a small stream that originates within (what is now) Mapperley Golf Course.

[see Part #2 for continuations & Part #3 for completions of the search]

Update 5 July 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that used photos stored in Mapillary in the old format are broken. I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).