After a mix of damp days and heavy downpours, got up on Saturday to find we'd got another pond at the bottom of the garden - and by dinnertime (after more rain) it was a positive lake, which had flooded back into the fruit cage.
Fortunately the rain stopped in the afternoon, and we were able to get the drain rods out in (what turned out to be) a vain attempt to clear the drainage pipe into the field next door.
In the end we had to resort to running hose pipes from the 'lake' down to the bottom of the drive, to siphon the water off into the roadside drains, and to clear enough water to hopefully find the drainage pipe.
The hosepipes did sterling work and by Sunday morning, the lake was back to pond, and the fruit cage was clear of water.
We even got a small pipe draining through the hedge into the field, but weren't able to clear the main drainage pipe, which we thought had probably collapsed.
Overnight it rained heavily again, but the hosepipes etc. kept draining and at least on Monday morning the pond if it wasn't any smaller, wasn't at least that much bigger.
Finally, today, it stopped raining - the 'pond', now little more than a muddy puddle, finally allowed access to the old drainage pipe, which had indeed collapsed. Luckily we had an old scaffolding pipe lying around the place, and Martin was able (with some brute force, and getting rather muddy in the process) to hammer through a new drainage channel.
We'll have to do some more work at some point to establish a clear path through to the pipe - but that can wait for another day, and some better weather!
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