This week some workmen have completed a dig for a gas/water pipe on my commute. After filling in a huge hole, what has been left behind is a big area (several square metres) of "ectoplasm" sort of jelly. It's all over the disturbed ground near the filled-in hole, and piles up to perhaps 4..6" deep in places. It looks like melting snow, has no obvious smell.

I ride through it every day and it's not going away.

WTF is it?

is it a big dogging area?

it's what they use to soak up raw sewage when they find a duff pipe 😉

Oh, kind of like that water retaining stuff for plants?

Isn't it silca crystals? You get little packets of it in shoe boxes.

ah, looks like our washing machine did this weekend when a disposable nappy (we don't even use them?!) got into our wash.

These 'workmen', did they drive black Vauxhall Omega estates?