Our recent walks are sedate and easy, as we follow quiet paths, with their ghosts of farmers’ wives and docile ponies, winding their way to market among these gentle valleys, along the flat, exposed seams of white limestone, or the banks of trout streams where sheep graze in green water meadows or on the grass covered hills. These curated paths along disused railway lines from previous mining and agriculture, are neatly surfaced and signposted, and they give an ideal recuperation route following my recent illness and surgery, very different from the rough and exposed, wet and boggy packhorse trails above the farm where I wrote ‘Grass’.
Derbyshire (even Sheffield), rain can seem endless and eroding of the spirits, and floods are not unknown here, but the rain on the Pennine hills is a different and wilder animal, sometimes quietly misty or drizzly, sometimes gently wetting, but periodically blowing in curtains and sheets that appear to be straight from the endless cold Atlantic, and continue to fall for hours, days and even weeks, until the ground is saturated and can take no more. The unstable land, often a mixture of slippery mudstones and harder sandstone, combined with high rainfall and the removal of the traditional woodlands of the past has resulted in unpredictable and frequent flooding in these valleys. Floods have been a regular occurrence for centuries – the first recorded incident was in 1615. After heavy, slow-moving rain, thunderstorms, or snow melt, water still pours down from the hilltops, rushing down any track or road, through and over dry stone walls, collecting stones, rocks, tree trunks and other debris on its way downhill. Living near the top of a hill offers little protection, as the mossy moorland above gets saturated and the flood often starts here, with peaty water pouring out of the moors onto the fields below, where it picks up speed, pouring across the grass and through farmyards and barns.
Our little farm was one of these, bordering on the moorland above, so when, in the final months of 2015, rainfall was constant and the ground was totally waterlogged, on the morning of Boxing Day 2015, there was another sudden and unexpected flood, one of the most serious on record, made worse by the fact that everyone was on holiday, shops were closed, and few people were at work. My diary records this event:
26th December 2015 - The day started at seven when the flood alert sounded mournfully in the valley, and I found the yard full of water. We spent several hours attempting to hold the water at bay with brushes and buckets, as the rain poured down the fields and through the drystone walls, and the drain down the field by the telegraph post had carried so much water overnight that it burst through the wall and washed the surface of the track completely away, right down to the packhorse trail stones.
Having visited our yard, the water flooded down the fields and lanes from the saturated moorland, flowing out through the gaps in the drystone walls (for which they are designed), flooding other upland farmyards and homes on its way downhill. Down the streams, rivers and roads, the water poured on, overflowing the ditches and drains,
bringing walls and bridges down and filling narrow lanes with stones, mud and other debris.
As this unstoppable, life-threatening torrent of water barrelled down the steep hills into the narrow valleys, the rivers and canals in the valleys filled beyond their capacity, and overflowed to flood roads and streets, with brown water. On Christmas Day, many exhausted shopkeepers, party revellers and holiday-bound office workers had left work innocent of the flood warning, leaving businesses unprotected by the usual sandbags or flood doors. Families had gone to bed, presents left scattered on living room floors, washing up left undone and valuables still at risk on sideboards and mantelpieces.
Then, as they slept, the water came, rushing in through kitchens often built in basements, and living spaces in a flashing flood, often gone as quickly as it came, but leaving devastation in its wake, as people woke to the flood siren, too late to save their valuables, and only glad their children were safe upstairs, as they began the soul destroying job of cleaning up their lives, often for the second or third time in recent years. Business owners, often only hearing about the flood by panic calls or TV news came rushing, as did van loads of volunteers, ready to help in any way they could.
After we had diverted the stream down the lane by dismantling part of the wall, we walked down the lane to see what else the rain had done. The bridge on the lane was damaged once again, and when we went out to the edge of the hill by the Golf Course, we could see down into the town. The shining silver flood water was just visible on the Burnley Road through the arches of the viaduct. The scene up here was one of devastation, but at least the water hadn’t breached our amateur flood barriers. We can only feel for the people further down in the valley and order some flood doors. The next day we drove gingerly down the track to the town where Christmas toys, decorated trees, wrapping paper and cardboard floated or stood soggy on pavements or in yards, awaiting the bin collection, as volunteers worked to restore some sort of order.
As we walk the quiet lanes of Derbyshire I remember the floods we experienced during a decade in those hills, and hope that the people in the valley who were affected by flooding have survived and now have protection for their homes. Despite the extensive and expensive flood defences in the Calder Valle, floods will almost certainly become more frequent as our world warms up in future years.
コメント