Somerset Underwater

A poor phone camera image of the lands beneath the Polden Ridge to the South of our village beyond Greinton.

 Huge areas of the Somerset levels around us are again underwater. We're lucky to be safe up on Polden Ridge and although the Meare side of the village is a bit flooded, the Taunton side is underwater for miles and miles. The back road via Burrowbridge was underwater for weeks, less than a year ago, and my heart goes out to the house-owners and businesses that have been tidying up and rebuilding since. Muchelney is completely isolated and North Curry and other local villages now sit within a shallow sea of sunken cars and lines of pollarded willows that now define the hidden roads and field edges. In years past this landscape flooded regularly but with the drains and drainage of the last century we have all become used to a land of roads and houses, but with the recent wet winters the floodplaines have returned to their pattern of seasonal immersion and the huge expanse of flooded valley now stretches out beneath the low sun of a winter sky.