There has been a great deal of rain in Somerset. One unfortunate man actually drowned as his car was washed away in a ford earlier this week and its continued to rain steadily. There was a let up at the end of the week as the rain was replaced by strong winds which blew our rabbit hutch about the garden but today the rain is back with a vengeance. I'm very glad I dismantled the leaning log shelter last weekend, and cleared the leaves from the gutters, and today I found myself crawling on top the my studio shed roof battening down tarpaulin as the water is getting in and damaging my artwork.
The levels are flooded in great areas between us and Wells with the distinction between the riens, drains and fields all but lost. I always quite fancy running about on the flooded fields when they are like this but the inability to decipher depth from the level surface would surely lead to trouble. The swans free to explore these vast expanses of water, and the gangs of lapwings all seem quite happy with the conditions, although I saw three dead badgers in the road within 5 miles of each other and I wonder if they are perhaps less happy and flooded out of their tunnels when the water is particularly high. The tops of submerged fenceposts, lines of pollarded trees and clear strips of open water are all that currently define the usually clear boundaries between land and water. The South Drain and Kings Sedgemore Drain are both above their banks this afternoon but still flowing strongly, unable to keep up with the sheer volume of water weeping constantly out of the saturated peat.
It is now 10-o-clock and I've just been out to collect my daughter from the theatre and it's again raining heavily as predicted. The Sainsbury's car-park in Street is predictably below water this evening with trolleys abandoned and the van dragging in the giant puddles crossing the roads as rivers of water run off the fields. I'm very glad that we live on the side of a hill, high above the low lands.
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