We had to travel back to Leeds on Sunday and I was dreading the trip. The Met Office had issued an amber weather warning for wind and rain. Add spray on saturated roads and travelling conditions would be hazardous. Throw in Smart Motorways with reduced speed limits and I would never have chosen to travel. I would far rather have preferred sitting snug and warm watching a cowboy movie!
But, alas, life isn’t like that! We had to bite the bullet and hit the motorway, M56, M6, M62 before we headed off down minor roads. The ‘controller’ of Smart Motorways was having a laugh! We were warned about ‘debris on the road’, 40 mph! Then we were told about ‘obstacles on the road’ 40 mph! There followed an ‘incident in the road’ 40 mph! ‘Spray on the road’ told us to travel at 50 mph. ‘Beware flooding on the road’ soon followed. We saw and experienced nothing! A small puddle was the flood and there is always a problem with spray whenever it rains. We didn’t need a warning and would have kept our distance without one!
We finally arrive at the little village where my mother in law lives. A car had parked across the road! We were told that this was because the river had burst its banks and a house close by didn’t want cars splashing water into their property! So we had a further twenty minutes detour before we reached our destination! I didn’t realise home owners could take the law into their hands and stop traffic driving past their houses!
When I lived in South Africa we knew that we lived in a country which had extreme weather! We’d have drought with blazing hot summers and I remember going to church to pray for rain. Floods often followed and I have had a near death experience when sluice gates were opened without warning. Our car was halfway across a bridge when we heard a roar and saw a wave of water rushing towards us. My daughter was a few months old and I had her lying in my arms, sitting in the passenger seat. Child car seats hadn’t been invented forty odd years ago!
We should never have crossed the bridge in the first place because the water was far too high but the driver thought he was infallible! The car cut out and I closed my eyes as I leaned forward in the vain hope of protecting my child. What seemed like an age the car burst into life again and we managed to get to the other side split seconds before the deluge struck. The noise was deafening. ‘Knew we’d make it’ the idiotic driver smirked. ‘The devil looks after his own’ came my furious reply!
Not living in the north of Scotland, on a river bank or a flood plane , the U.K. weather is rarely a concern for us. When I worked and had to leave early in the morning I have had problems digging my car out of the snow and gritting and scraping the hill outside our house. But that was not a regular occurrence and soon forgotten. Only once in the eighteen years I have lived in this house have I seen destructive gusts of wind. Driving home one evening I watched in horror as a wooden shed uprooted and landed a few feet from my car. Only once have I not been able to get home from work because of snow but my parents had lived close by so could park my car in their driveway and walk home.
So I am grateful that Storm Ciara has not been more than a nuisance and the dire weather warnings have not caused us anything other than a slow trip to Leeds. I know others have not be so lucky and hope that there is no loss of life or any severe flooding. The Australian fires have been horrendous and when I see the devastation caused by hurricanes and brutal storms around the world I am very grateful that I live in a secluded part of England. We do have many grey, wet days and sometimes summer has passed us by, but it could be far worse! My grass is not greener on the other side! 👠
Jenny Burrell 