Raindrops Are Falling . . .

Doesn't look that bad - but when it did rain, it really really rained . . .

At any rate the weather certainly gave us a month to remember!

De-Clematising the Yew Tree

The Clematis on the arch (small white flowers - probably a montana) has been gradually working it's way up the yew tree.  Decided we'd better do something about it  . . .

A strategic cut and Martin was able to pull it down, vine by vine - but not before he'd had a good 'swing' first:

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!

Keeping it Cool . . .

After that baking hot end to March, it got distinctly cooler - heating back on, fires lit . . .

April was a real mixed bag of sunshine and showers:

May started off in much the same fashion, but did finally heat up in the last week or so when the sun finally came out for more than a day at a time (even had one really hot weekend).  The unsettled weather was back by the end of the month though:

And there was worse to come . . .