Waterscape

It has rained for two days. The Met Office said that we would have a fortnight's rain in one day. Everything feels sodden; the roads have water standing on them the drains are full, the Lugg at Combe Bridge was coffee-coloured and swollen, starting to burst its banks. 'Burst' is the wrong word; the Lugg runs along the bottom of a wide valley here which has been carefully cultivated leaving a long area either side of the river which allows it to flood gently, to spread across the plain - and no further. The cattle use it, and the horses, and it is mixed marshland and woodland. At our point it is called the Moor, and is the ancient common grazing land for the village of Combe, which is where the name of the hamlet - Coombes Moor - comes from. Coombe, Coombes, Combe, perhaps even Combes, all variations of one place of about 30 people. The houses are at least eighteenth-century and were built on the slopes of the valley away from the floodwaters.

But tonight many of the rivers around here are on flood watch. The Arrow, across the hill at Pembridge, the Wye at Hereford and Ross, the Severn (which can flood spectacularly), the Teme at Ludlow, all on red flood watch. Since we have been here the floods have been tremendous; is this a summer pattern for the future, torrential downpours and weeks without rain, semi-drought?