WIND & WETNESS.

Well, just for a bit of a change (at least for the first paragraph) last night the problem was wind (no ... I don't mean personally). It woke me several times through the night as it raced around the upper part of the house and made musical instruments out of the chimney pots. This morning we watched the trees sway one way then another as it changed direction. Had the fallen autumn leaves been dry they would have been swirling around all over the place, but they were just too rain sodden heavy to even try to fly. Eventually in the afternoon it lost it's power just leaving pewter dark skies behind it.

I decided to take the dog for a small walk along a section of the River Cam where I know there is a rather unusual houseboat almost permanently moored. I had been wondering how it was coping with the rise in river height. Just as we had got out of the car ... the wind picked up again and slammed us with a full blast of almost horizontal rain. We were wet within minutes and so carried on along the footpath on top of the now slippery bank.

There was a canal barge safely moored on the other side, but the flooding could clearly be seen ,something the dog just had to explore, so I clambered down the bank to see if there were any signs of how high the river had risen. Sure enough about three feet above the normal level was a thin, almost invisible, but continuous line of tiny round duck weed leaves (Lemna minor) which indicated that the river level had actually sunk over  the last few days. However further along from where you see the tree on the right of the photo, I saw numerous trees (willow, alder & some silver birch) many of these had been uprooted and were all leaning in the same northerly direction which suggests they'd fallen during the southerly gales some months ago. It was a sad sight to see. The rain raced off away from us to douse some other walkers to the east of us, I saw them as I drove back, looking as bedraggled as I did. Some gentleman who had been pheasant shooting had only managed one each before they got fully doused, it wasn't really the best time to be out.

As we headed back to where the car was parked I managed to get photo of the boat. She was moored up right by the bridge and it was obvious, looking at the fact she could not have got under it that the Cam water had risen quite considerably over the last weeks.

One of the strange things about this vantage point on the bank, is that turn around and one is looking down onto a local farmers fields, which seems rather strange to visitors to the Fens, in fact some get quite spooked by the fact that a river can be higher than fields.

Also if you look carefully across the river in the top photo, you will notice a dyke running at right angles around the corner of the field. Footpaths too tend to be almost ruler straight but ... after a while one gets used to this precision land and water management.

Unfortunately this year the hard work of folk over centuries was beaten by the weather.

Shhh ... tomorrow might just be sunny all day ... I will let you know.