Apres moi, le deluge

Some days ago I blipped a photo of my beautiful village. Today things look rather different!!

P and I set off this morning to try to find a way to get to Perth where I had a training course to run. Within yards of our home, we ran into the first flood. We navigated two more, ending up only just making it through radiator-deep water - we'd gone less than half a mile. On the news we heard that many of the surrounding roads were also impassable, so decided to go home. Rather than return through the floods, we chose the long way round, over higher ground. It took us another 45 minutes because there were further floods, especially where the water was pouring off the surrounding fields.

When we finally got home, we discovered first of all that despite there being water everywhere, none of it was coming through our taps! Also, somewhere on the adventure we'd lost our front number plate. We donned our wellies and walked back into the village, wading through the floods, and chatting to our affected neighbours. The flood that we'd managed just to negotiate had claimed three cars which had been abandoned by their drivers. Some friends of ours were drying out their flooded car and garage, and ruing the decision not to put their flood defences up last night as water lapped across their living room floor.

I walked up to the village green to see that the burn had completely burst its banks, and turned the green into the water park that you can see in this picture.

Meanwhile, washed up on the bank beside the flooded road P found our number plate, which we bore home like some trophy won in adversity.

An unplanned, unexpected day off today - we're still without water some 5 hours later so it's crossed legs all round! Meanwhile, we're starting work on our ark...