My son and his wife called this morning just as I got back from having coffe in town with a friend.
His poor wife is badly handicapped and needs a wheel chair - they took me to see their Lane - an un-made-up, unadopted road with about a dozen houses on it. The top surface has been completely washed away by the floodwater and is impassable - with great difficulty my son can get her wheelchair up to the road where his car is parked and he had brought her round just for a change of scene. So we went into Richmond for a bit of lunch.
That and two walks with Tess and a bit of ironing and I am pretty tired and just feel like sitting down. The whole village where they live is like a war zone but everyone is pulling together and gradually things are returning to somekind of normality.
I spoke to my son about how impressed I was by the Dunkirk Spirit in the village and he agreed but quite rightly said that now what was needed was a bit of D Day Spirit on the part of the Authorities to make sure it doesn't happen again. The flooding is caused by water pouring down off the Grouse Moors - army land which does need careful thought as to how to divert much of the water before it reaches the village. There is a meeting next week so time will tell as they say.
About Me
- The Weaver of Grass
- I am a widow for the second time - first marrriage 39 years, second marriage 23 years - both very happy. My second marriage was to a farmer and when he died the farm was sold. I now live in the nearby small town on the edge of Wensleydale in The Yorkshire Dales. My beloved Border Terrier died a couple of years ago - I still miss her but as I am 90 and need carers I shalln't get another I have one son,who lives nearby with his wife, three grandchildren, one step grandchild, two great grandchildren and two step great grandchildren..Life is good.
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15 comments:
Well we live in a blame society so that doesn't surprise me. Perhaps the Army can provide ditches or levéés to steer the water away from the village should freak rain come again.
Managed grouse moors are the cause of such flooding I believe. They no longer hold water as they used to.
Do they remove the peat I wonder?
The flooding on the Somerset Levels was due to poor management on behalf of the authorities, who actually forbade farmers from clearing their own ditches when nobody else would. Cutbacks, of course. One local farmer went against the water authorities and cleared everyone's ditches for them as well as opening sluice gates as his family had done for generations. His village didn't flood. This is not the behaviour of a blame society. It is called taking responsibility through common sense when everyone else seems to have lost theirs.
I am well aware of the Environment Agency and their failure to carry out their obligations in the Somerset Levels. They fail in the same way with here on the coast. I think the management of the Grouse Moors in not an omission of a duty of care, it is perhaps that a new management needs to be looked at altogether, and that involves whether the economy of the Yorkshire Dales wants to rethink the future of their grouse moors.
I do hope that meeting reaches a satisfactory conclusion to avoid repetitions of flooding in the future.
It is mercifully cooler and fresher and I feel quite different today. I even managed to cross off two lengthy jobs from my 'to do' list. I think we will have unsettled weather for a day or two - I just hope it wont be humid again as the list is far from finished.
Good Luck with the meeting.
We complained for years about the wildfire danger and lack of water up the hill where we lived and that a fire could wipe us all out. Well sure enough some crazy stated a fies in the canyon it raced up the hill and burned down our homes. only then with us screaming at every meeting did the water tank get built. You wouldn't even know it was there. could have saved the hillside.
Out village hall has been given a generator in case of disaster and or zombie apocalypse
How to handle drainage is a 1st world problem; so much water and so little way to disperse it.
Good luck to that little village.
You really have had a rough time up in Yorkshire. It's raining here this morning, but without the threat of some huge reservoir over our heads.
The management of moors for grouse shooting has been much in the news in recent years because of conservationists allegations of the bad impact that this management can have on the environment. Hard to believe that this damage hasn't occurred before but given the weather extremes that are forecast to become more regular, then clearly a major re-think is on the cards.
Well at Pickering they have been working on this, partly successful, it is called 'slowing the flow' and it entails building 'leaky' dams higher up.....One unfortunate idea was to build a wall through the town but this was quickly dismissed as stupid!
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/slowing-the-flow-at-pickering/
Thank you for that information Thelma. There is a meeting next week - I shall pass the information on to my son.
Thanks everyone.
Houses on stilts are a common sight in Austrian areas liable to be flooded. Also in such areas there's invariably a flood stone, usually on a building, with high water marks and the years carved into it. A warning to future builders. Here it went dark an hour ago, then came a high wind, and now the first rumbles and flashes and just now the first rain on the panes.
Best to leave such meetings until emotions have calmed down. Knee jerk reactions are not a good thing. The grouse moors are vital to the economy of the Dales and I am sure the use of the Dales is important to the Army too and they will come up trumps with a solution.
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