Water, water everywhere

Sitting here in the far north of Scotland, waiting for Storm Gertrude and its severe gales to arrive tomorrow, and with yet more heavy rain already falling, I’m starting to feel slightly punch-drunk with the weather that has been thrown at the north and west of the UK in the last couple of months.

It all began back in the middle of November with Storm Abigail. Quite who in the Met Office had the bright idea of giving our storms names I don’t know, but at the present rate we’ll be through the alphabet in no time! Abigail was closely followed by Barney, both bringing very high winds and considerable disruption, then at the end of November Storm Clodagh arrived, with more damaging gales and very heavy rain.

It was Clodagh, in particular, that transformed the normally placid babbling brook at the edge of our garden

into a still small, but quite scarily fast-flowing torrent, capable of sweeping along quite large sections of tree

and caused the River Severn locally to rise to its second highest recorded level.

After a breathing space lasting less than a week, Storm Desmond brought unprecedented amounts of rain to north-west England and south-west Scotland in one horrendous weekend, with 341mm (almost 13.5 inches) of rain falling in 24 hours over the Honister Pass in Cumbria. All over Cumbria and northern Lancashire rivers burst their banks and towns and villages were flooded, while tens of thousands of homes lost power, some for up to three days.

Flooded church on the shore of Derwentwater - Saturday December 5th 2015

After such an experience people could surely have been forgiven for thinking that the weather could only improve, but not a bit of it. The gales brought by Storm Eva on Christmas Eve were closely followed by intensely heavy rain on Boxing Day which led to swift, severe and record-breaking flooding in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. To bring the wettest December on record to an end we had Storm Frank just before New Year, bringing further severe flooding to many parts of Scotland.

So far, so horrible, but this isn’t a weather blog, and to sound a more personal note our Christmas visit to DD and her family gave me a glimpse of what it must be like to live in an area prone to flooding. They live near Selby in the wide, flat Vale of York, a couple of miles outside the village of Cawood on the River Ouse. Some degree of flooding after heavy rain is quite common, as we saw on our New Year visit three years ago. However this time the Boxing Day cloudburst made the situation much more threatening.

The next day being Sunday we had gone to church in the village (the church being very close to the river) and as soon as the service ended and the congregation began to leave, a very youthful-looking soldier came in and told us that they were warning people to move their possessions off the floor in case the water overtopped the flood defences. Everyone in church rallied round and carpets were rolled up and lifted, the piano was somehow manoeuvred up the step into the chancel and a couple of pieces of  particularly old and valued furniture were lifted up on top of the pews out of harm’s way.

When everything that could be moved had been moved, we came out of church to be greeted by a scene of intense and well-organised activity.  Soldiers and local inhabitants were working together to move large numbers of sandbags across the churchyard to raise the level of the flood defences between the church and the river by half a metre from 7.9 to 8.4 metres. 

Here come the sandbags

Working together

As it turned out their strenuous efforts were well justified, as the water level peaked a couple of days later at 8.2 metres!

Water lapping the top of the flood defences and still rising

In this low-lying area the flooding was very widespread, with farmers checking on their inundated fields by boat and an intrepid waterskier being filmed practising on the lake of floodwater along the Ouse.

Cawood with the church at the right and water cascading over the defences into fields at the top left.

Cawood bridge going nowhere. It has only just reopened a month later after repairs.

All Saints' Church, Cawood, with its feet almost in the water

As DH and I travelled home to Wales the next day, our radio listening was regularly interrupted by traffic announcements about flooded roads and cancelled rail services, which brought home to us how very disruptive such extreme weather can be to the everyday life of a great many people.

And now it is happening yet again. In Orkney all the schools will be closed tomorrow because of the severe gales expected. There will inevitably be wind and water damage and almost certainly more flooding in places and to add to the mix we are now being warned to expect snow in Scotland on Saturday! Winter has arrived in force and we are hunkering down…

April showers with a difference

While the rest of the UK has been continuing to bask under blue skies and warm sunshine, up here in the frozen north we have gone in just 4 days from this:

  

to this:

The promised return to winter materialised with a vengeance today, with my walk to church this morning taken in the teeth of a fierce hail shower driven by a bitter northerly wind. Thank goodness the church is not much more than a quarter of a mile away! The service was followed by a walk home an hour later in windless calm and amid gently falling snow.

Since then calm and fitfully sunny intervals have alternated with driving, heavy hail, sleet and snow showers which sweep along the valley from the sea to the north, hiding the castle, kyle and mountains from sight. It’s been an afternoon for quiet knitting, accompanied by tea and hot, buttered toast, interrupted by the occasional dash to the window to watch the weather change yet again.

Who stole the castle?

As I write it is snowing hard, but by the time I post this, the sun may be out again and the water droplets glittering from every twig of the still leafless silver birch in the garden. April at her most capricious.

Postscript:  It was worth waking early and braving the cold of the conservatory to capture this view before the sun moves round behind the mountain until the afternoon. We had more snow overnight.

Capricious April

“Oh, to be in England now that April’s there”  Robert Browning may have had a point, though he was writing from the lush warmth of an Italian spring, rather than the chilly dampness of a northern Scottish season. The last fortnight’s scattering of lovely sunny days may soon seem like a dream if the weather forecast for this area is to be believed. 

With luck the promised showers will be of rain, rather than the snow which accompanied our journey north at the beginning of the month, but wintry showers are not beyond the bounds of possibility by the weekend.

Thank goodness DH and I took advantage of the sunny weather to get out and about a bit. The landscape of the North-West Highlands is wonderful whatever the weather, but in sunshine it is truly spectacular and our respective cameras have been working overtime.

The road north on a snowy April Fool's Day

Ben Loyal the morning after our arrival

And a week later after a beautifully sunny Easter.

The Kyle of Tongue heading north to the sea

A symphony in grey - no leaves to soften the trees yet

Clouds over the mountains of Sutherland herald a change in the weather

A very different sunset this evening

Still, at least the disappearance of the sun gives me an excellent excuse to abandon gardening for family history research, which is proving ever more absorbing as I learn the techniques of finding and assessing the wealth of information available online. Knitting too is coming on apace, with the weekly knit & natter group enabling rapid progress on my latest pair of socks. 

I’ve also been busy reviving the almost forgotten art of knitting a new toe for the socks which DH’s iron toenails have worn into a hole. There’s too much work in a pair of hand-knitted socks to throw them into the bin at the first sign of weakness and it’s been fun giving a couple of pairs a new lease of life, even to matching the pattern of the self-patterning yarn. I knew it was worth keeping all those remnants of yarn from the many pairs of socks I’ve knitted over the past few years.

Now all I have to do is to spend more time on my shamefully neglected clarinet and my life will be in perfect balance again, which is more than can be said for Simon’s rather bedraggled cat.

Hints of eternity

Family and friends sometimes ask us why on earth we make one of our twice-yearly visits to Scotland at the very tail-end of the year. What makes us, they wonder aloud, head north as the hour goes back, the dark evenings close in and winter approaches?

The answer is simple. This glorious, rugged and unspoilt landscape is breathtakingly beautiful at all times of year and in all weathers, and the warmth of the welcome we receive from our friends and neighbours is undimmed by the vagaries of the weather. The bonus is that there are no midges!

Because we travelled up by car this time, I’m able to drive myself about while we’re here and this morning I headed across the Kyle causeway to Knit and Natter. Halfway across I stopped to gaze at Ben Loyal, swathed in dark, turbulent cloud and to try, of course, to capture the scene.

After a very enjoyable morning of coffee and cake, chatting (and coughing) and even knitting, I headed home, but on a whim stopped in a lay-by to visit again what must be one of the most wonderfully located cemeteries in the world. It stands alone, close to the causeway, looking out over an austere but beautiful landscape of sea and mountains that has something of eternity about it. Like the war memorial, high on the opposite hill, at which I attended the service of  remembrance last Sunday, this simple cemetery, in its stunning setting, catches the attention and focuses thought in a very profound way.

Eventually I dragged myself away and drove quietly home, my mind filled with a kaleidoscope of images and impressions. This glorious corner of the country gives us so much enjoyment, but it also makes me think and that must be good.

 

It made a nice change…

…to wake up to this, though I’m not sure my North American readers would agree. J

This winter has been almost continuously grey and extremely wet and windy, with catastrophic results for communities along our two biggest rivers and southern and western coasts. With another two severe storms due to hit us between tomorrow and the weekend, I couldn't help rejoicing at the sight of proper winter weather – just for a little while.

The rain has been so heavy and prolonged that it could be weeks or even months before all the flood-waters subside, since the water table has reached the surface in many places and the excess water has nowhere to go. My heart goes out to those who are struggling to protect their homes and carry on with daily life in the face of nature’s extremes.

This afternoon we all had a respite and the sun even shone. Tomorrow DH and I will be battening down the hatches and hoping the wind speed doesn't reach the 70mph gusts being forecast for our area. Fingers crossed - replacing roof tiles isn't really what we want to see on our to-do list at the moment...

The fog is finally clearing

I’m speaking mentally, you understand, not meteorologically. The almost endless cycle of wind and rain which has been battering the British Isles for the past two months hasn’t allowed much fog to form, though today’s welcome lull between two storms has seen the hills look misty for once.

The mental fog after my general anaesthetic has been a different matter. I don’t ever remember taking so long to shed the effects of an anaesthetic and I’m still finding it hard to concentrate for any length of time. I seem to have slipped into a kind of suspended animation, so that time drifts by almost without my noticing it. Only now am I starting to feel a bit more awake and ready to tackle things, as long as they don’t involve heavy lifting.

The past two weeks have been been filled with a random mixture of blog and book-reading, knitting and TV-watching - hardly the stuff of a riveting blog-post. The weather has been almost unrelievedly terrible, with the countryside too sodden and wind-blown to tempt me out for a walk. The real sign of hope is the noticeably lengthening days, which reminds me that, despite all signs to the contrary, winter is passing and spring can’t be too far away.

Until then, perhaps what I need is a mischievous cat to keep me on my toes and stop me nodding off. All that mending would certainly help the time pass productively.

He’s behind you!

Oh, no, he isn't! Oh, yes, he is!

A week ago DH and I revisited our childhood when DS and his wife took the birthday boy and both sets of grandparents to this winter’s pantomime at the Oxford Playhouse. We had wonderful seats, right in the middle of the auditorium, and it didn't take long for us oldies to shed all inhibitions and join in with the traditional responses. In fact I reckon we had at least as much fun as any child there, if not more, and we were almost hoarse by the time the show finished.

Like all good pantomimes, there were jokes and routines aimed squarely at the children and others tailored more to their adult companions. Robin Hood and his Merry Men made sly digs at Sir Guy and the Sheriff of Nottingham on the subject of iniquitous new taxes, such as the bedroom tax, while the latter tried to curry favour with the peasants by promoting a brand-new Help To Buy scheme to enable them to own their own hovels.

DH and I booed and hissed with the best of them!

Instead of the customary Friar we had a wonderfully over-the-top Dame Teresa Tuck, superbly played by a Kentucky-born actor in his first pantomime. For us, he and the two baddies stole the show. Why are villains so often more interesting than the hero?

Song, dance, humour and excitement - what more could we ask?

The pantomime was just one highlight in our very enjoyable stay in a very wet Oxford, so wet that we had to forego our usual family walk this time. Port Meadow was even more flooded than it was this time last year and the nearby canal was almost overflowing onto the towpath. Since we left on Tuesday, two of the main roads into the city centre have become impassable because of floodwater, a situation replicated all down the Thames Valley towards London and along much of the lower reaches of the River Severn.

Closer to home, the seafront in Aberystwyth, the Welsh resort in whose hospital I had my cataract surgery, was severely damaged by some of the worst storm surges on record and it wasn’t the only town around Britain’s coast to suffer. After the fun and feasting of Christmas, the New Year has started badly for a lot of people and we can only hope the weather has done its worst for a while. This was definitely no joke.....

No strolling along this promenade for a while....

Sunday postscript: It was heartening to read on the BBC website this morning that over 200 people turned out yesterday to help with the clean-up of the seafront at Aberystwyth. Community spirit is very far from dead.

Most images via Google

I give up!

Not only did DH and I wake up to this view of the hills across the valley (in mid-May!) but when I logged on I was greeted with a positive blizzard of spam, not all of which had been caught by Blogger's spam filter. Sigh….   I won’t ban anonymous comments, otherwise several people I care about couldn't comment, and I don’t want to put on comment moderation, as I know some of you like to talk among yourselves when I’m not there. J

The ray of light in this gloomy situation is that the latest version of word verification is very much easier to decipher, so that even I can usually do it first time. This means that I can switch it on without feeling too guilty, until the spammers give up and go away. The sound you hear is Perpetua swallowing her principles and admitting herself beaten – for the moment…..