Walk 071 - Springtime in Haynes

Date: 29th November
Distance: 2.50 kms
Locality: Haynes

Streets walked:

• Boatwright Avenue
• Hack Lane
• Markwell Avenue
• Laverick Street
• Rickett Street
• Jordan Street
• Nesbit Drive
• Bristow Street
• Bright Street
• Dorset Street

Running street count: 869
Running distance count: 301.83 kms

Again this is a situation where Runtastic's maps aren't quite up-to-date with the rate of building in Armadale, which is going at a crazy pace. This development is called Springtime, and it has a suspiciously simple and traditional road layout with street names that are unpretentious (unusual as far these things go). At any rate, the image below gives a better idea of how it currently looks:

As with the other new estates in town the following points occur to me as I walk around:

• high energy vibe with lots of young families doing their thing
• the public open spaces look fantastic
• these public open areas are desperately needed because the properties have almost no yard space
• vehicles block the footpaths every few metres because the double garages are either full of stuff that would normally be in a shed (which these houses can't fit into the tiny backyards), or because everyone owns a massive Nissan Navara, Ford F250 or people-mover van which leaves bugger-all space to fit a second vehicle (and many houses have three cars)
• Lack of space on these blocks for new trees to grow and a lack of established trees means the estate is a giant heat-sink. To be fair, there weren't any established trees to keep...
• Artificial lawn can still get weeds in it.

Give it five years to settle in and Springtime will look tremendous (heck, it's already fairly nice). Give it 20 years and it could be nightmarish.We'll wait and see.