Flood thoughts

AS we come along the winding lane from the village pub, I can’t help noticing the pile of wet-looking sand bags outside one of the houses. The house is on the corner of a path that leads onto the beach.

I suddenly remembered some 30+ years ago visiting Heysham. It was night & we didn’t know our way. We turned down this pathway & hastily changed into reverse as we saw the sea coming up the path. Clearly from the sandbags there must have been some flooding down in the village centre. The tides have certainly been high recently, whipped up by the winds as they have been.

On the whole we seem to be surviving the weather not too badly. Needless to say we’ve got our usual extra lake, but now the greenhouse has gone, that lake has more room to expand into. The usual river streams across the patio area into the bog garden. A couple of trees are leaning precariously but they would be coming down in April when our garden has its makeover.

As for Morecambe, they’ve already announced that there’s over £1million of repairs to the sea defences that will needed. And we’ve yet to get the calmer weather of spring after the normally very high spring tides.

There seems to be no let up from the storms. They seem to return every few days, then there’s another deluge, another gale.

We feel very grateful that although our home is built on what was formerly old marshland and has a tendency to have water rising through the ground at times, it doesn’t flood in the way it does in some parts of the country.

Our home is built on a raft with that situation in mind so just floats on the water, rather than letting it inside the house. There is the floodplain around the River Lune on one side of us & Morecambe Bay on the other, but there are several hills in between preventing those waters reaching us. And we are grateful. When you’re buying a house flood potential isn’t something you think about unless you obviously have a river at the end of your garden.

Meanwhile our hearts go out to those who are flooded, some even having to abandon their homes for the time being.

Where we used to live, in Arnside, our garage regularly flooded. We still remember the trauma of once opening the car doors to have water pouring out. As the water was salty sea water, the car had to be written off. But at least there was never any risk of the water getting into our first floor flat! 

It must be even more traumatic to have your home invaded by the water, trashed by it, so many irreplaceable things destroyed. I’m not sure if you would ever feel safe in that house again, even after it had been dried out & restored. I can’t help thinking I would be constantly anxious that what happened once may happen again.