Return of 'The Pond'

And here we go again indeed - new year, new 'pond' at the bottom of the garden . . .

To be fair, Storm Henk wasn't that bad for us, it was just the sheer relentlessness of the rain falling on already fairly sodden ground.

Even the path down to the Folly became waterlogged, to the point where I had to use bricks as stepping stones!

But it did eventually stop raining, and with some newly excavated drainage channels, things are almost back to normal now.  

Look out for an update on 'Project Flood Defences' later in the year!

Sunshine after the Storm

The latest storm of the season - Storm Christophe - landed this week, and while it wasn't that stormy in some ways, it did rain, a lot!

The paddling pool at the top of the garden was soon a rather large 'lake', which while it was draining off into the field next to us, couldn't quite keep pace with the amount of water still coming down and finding its way in from the top field.

Meanwhile on the other side of the crossroads the road had flooded again, although not as badly as in 2018.  Even so it was rather surprising to see someone riding their bike through the floodwaters!

 

By today the water was subsiding rapidly, and it had (mostly) stopped raining.  

The sun even came out for a little while - illuminating the first daffodil of the year.  Hopefully that means Spring is on its way!

Paddling Pool?

With all the wet weather we've been having recently, the top of the garden has once again developed 'pond' tendencies, and the bonfire pit has filled with water.

It's a bit like having a paddling pool at the top of the garden - wouldn't mind so much if we had a swimming pool (miss my swimming - our leisure centre is still designated as a field hospital and the pool is closed).

Anyway, various drainage schemes are under consideration, but for now this will have to do . . .

Waterlogged Wales

Well our bit of it anyway. 

Rain, rain and more rain, and the fields below our house are developing streams . . .

. . . with actual flooding in the village and over the cross-roads.

Hopefully it stops raining before we float away!

A Pond Too Far . . .

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!

The Great Flood

Well, it's been an interesting weekend.  Friday was wet - but not unusually so (at least in Aberystwyth) - yet this was the scene looking down on the town on Saturday morning.

According to the Met Office Trawsgoed (nearby) recorded rainfall of  "102.0 mm from 10am on Thursday to 10am on Saturday. This is well over its usual entire monthly average for June of 78.5mm."


All of which perhaps goes some way towards explaining the events of Saturday (in combination with high tides that prevented dispersal of the excess water) - and the unexpected (if not entirely unforeseen) flooding of the Aberystwyth retail parks and their environs.

Blaendolau fields of course have been known to flood on a fairly regular basis - but nothing quite like this:

The flooding of Morrisons, the roundabout, and the retail park (with its newly opened B&Q store) was a little more unexpected . . .




There have always been mutterings about 'building on the flood plain', and while the new housing estates largely escaped, the nearby doctor's surgery didn't fare quite so well.

The flooding wasn't limited to Aberystywth either, the evacuation of various caravan holiday parks hit the headlines, and the villages of Capel Bangor and Tal-y-bont were also badly hit in places (click on the links for more dramatic pictures!).

Doubtless normality will return in due course.  We survived intact up our hill, without even a pond to our name.

Update - Saturday 16th: The waters soon receded, although the rivers are still quite swollen - the clearing up could take some while mind you - the shops on the retail park are all still shut a week later (all except for Morrisons, which more or less escaped and was open again the next day) - just hoping today's heavy rain wasn't enough to trigger a repeat performance . . .

All pictures in this post (except the first) © Mike Hirst - thanks Mike!