Monday 23rd December started as a fairly normal day - the hospital had said my dad could be released later that day (hooray!) and I was due to drop my little boy off at my parents house in the nearest town as both my husband and I were working early on Christmas Eve. It had been pouring with rain all day and the wind was steadily increasing. We left at about 6pm to take my son to my parents - we live in a rural area so it's not unusual for some of the streams / rivers to flood the many fields we have out here when the weather is bad and there was already some roads that were covered in water. We made it there just as my parents arrived home from the hospital so was lovely to have as all together for a bit.
As we were leaving to go home my little got really, really upset and begged me to stay - that was very unusual in itself as he loves going to his grandparents house for a sleepover. After half an hour of trying to leave and him getting more and more worked up I realised that I was going to have to stay too but I had no clothes or my work uniform for the next day so I promised him that I would return and headed home for supplies. It had only been two hours since we left home but the storm had turned vicious in that time. On the way home we had to drive through flooded roads and saw a fire engine pumping water out of one of the cottages higher up the hill, the water never normally reaches this high!
I stuffed some clothes and my uniform in a bag and then had to make the journey back on my own as my husband was staying at home to go to work in the morning. It was a scary journey and took twice as long as normal - as well as everything already mentioned the drains were now like fountains along the sides of the road where the force of the water was backing up. I was driving through literal rivers of water and just praying that my car would make it through.
Thankfully I made it back ok but it was a sleepless night worrying about what was happening outside. My husband sent me a message at 1am to say that our entire village had lost power and he then got called out to work at 2am - he works at an international airport and the storm flooding had caused chaos, in fact 4 days later as I write this it's still not resolved and he's been working long hours with his colleagues trying to battle the elements.
I left for work at 5.45am on Christmas Eve - it was the scariest drive of my life!! It was immediately apparent that the power cut wasn't isolated to our village - it was pitch black pretty much the whole journey, which made it almost impossible to see the flood water until you were in it! It was also like driving through an obstacle course - I had to dodge fallen branches / trees, fence panels, traffic island cones and wheelie bins and this was on a major 'A' road, not the little country lanes that criss-cross most of this part of the county!! I eventually made it but it was clear that the adjacent villages were also without power and that there had been a lot of damage sustained.
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| The main 'A' road between our village and the next one |
It was an easier drive back to my parents house in the daylight but very sad to see what had happened overnight - I have never seen so much flood water and damage in this area and that includes the 'Great Storm' of 1987 (I was very young then!!).
Although the electricity companies were working hard it was clear with so many areas cut off that it wasn't going to be an easy fix. 3 of the 4 roads in & out of our village were flooded and closed by the police so I made a decision to try the last route home to check on our cats and collect more clothes as it didn't look like we were going to get to spend Christmas at home. I managed to get through the last road but the river had burst it's banks and was right up to the top of the bridge so I knew I was going to have to be very quick or I would be totally cut off. I threw enough clothes for the three of us to last a couple of days into bags, packed up as many Christmas presents as would fit in the car and got out as quickly as I could.
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| There was no getting home down this road either! |
So that's it really. We finally managed to get home yesterday afternoon. The electricity here was out for 23 hours in total and all the Christmas food in the fridge & freezer is ruined but in the grand scheme of things we've been very, very lucky. Sadly, a number of our friends and family's houses have been damaged by the wind and / or flood water and I think there is more to come so we are bracing ourselves as much as possible. I've posted some photos that other local people have taken and posted on Facebook, I can't (and won't) take credit for them at all - I was far too scared to stop and look when I ventured out!
We still had a lovely Christmas surrounded by loved ones and that is more than we could have asked for right now.
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too and have managed to stay as safe as possible x
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