BLAKENEY, NORFOLK - NOW AND THEN

We’ve just spent a very pleasant couple of days in Norfolk, with lunch today (Sunday) in The White Horse in Blakeney. For the gastro-pornographers among you, it was rare Roast Beef, crisp Yorkshire puds, Lemon and Rosemary Roast pototoes, Cauliflower Cheese and mixed vegetables including local Samphire– it was all very, very good.

Excuse me while I wipe up the drool on the keyboard.

We finished off by wandering down to the quayside, where we completed the meal with an Ice Cream Cornet. The picture below shows Dearly Beloved holding said ice creams. For the detail fanatics, mine is Exhibit B on the right, the large, dripping, double cone of Zero calorie, Ultra low Cholesterol, Rum and Raisin.

Apart from my wife and the Ice Creams, the really interesting bit in the picture is above her head. These two plaques show the heights reached by the flood waters in 1978 (lower plaque) and 1953 – the upper one. I have scaled it to be just over 8 feet.

Here the power of www-land comes into play. Just type in “Blakeney 1953” and you jump from an idyllic seaside afternoon, where today’s Test Score was a complete unknown and the ice cream is just what you wanted, to the stuff of Terror stories and images straight off “The Perfect Storm”.

On the night of 31 January 1953, an appalling set of weather conditions came together off Scotland’s North Coast, which led to winds of Hurricane Force blasting a huge wall of water down England’s eastern Coast, causing unparalled destruction in its wake. The brunt of the storm hit Lincolnshire and Norfolk’s North Coast full on, although the whole of that coast round to Canvey Island was devastated.

Whole villages virtually disappeared, houses were uprooted and thrown over flood defences, waves of up to 80ft high were reported, 40,000 animals were drowned as the waters flooded vast tracts of inland farms, and a total of 307 people perished around the coast. It was the worst storm the country had suffered in over 250 years.

The terrifying pictures below are from EDP archives.

THE VILLAGE OF SEA PALLING - 7 PEOPLE DIED THAT NIGHT

SALTHOUSE - 30 HOUSES DESTROYED - THAT'S ABOUT THE WHOLE VILLAGE

Today, it all seemed so different. The children catching crabs off the quayside, the sails on the horizon glistening brightly, the long, beautiful beaches of Sea Palling, West Runton, Wells, Holkham and Brancaster basking in the sun and looking just like the archetypal English holiday scene.

But just looking at those two innocuous little plaques in Blakeney make you realise just how much power and destruction is locked up and hiding in the sea and sky around us.

Very sobering.

Tags:

norfolk,
1953,
floods,blakeney,
sea palling,
salthouse

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - THE SEVERN IN FLOOD

This Flooding is a really big issue, and not just in Shropshire, where the River Severn already causes problems at least on an annual basis. Solving the issue, at least to start with, does not seem to be a priority to our leaders in Westminster, presumably because they can’t hear the wails and complaints from 130 miles away. But this time, it seems to have become a much wider spread and more serious issue throughout the country.

For ages now, we have had what seems like a farcical situation in Shrewsbury, where the Severn passes through in a large Ox Bow like sweep, dominating the town. When the river level rises dramatically, which it does with horrible consistency, many streets and buildings flood, and parts of the town look like a downmarket version of Venice for a week or so.

Our local council, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the offices they previously occupied had become unworkable, and that a new palatial edifice was needed to accommodate them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed. They sited it right next to the River in the centre of the town, at a level which guaranteed that all too often, the height of the river water matched the tops of the ground floor desks in the new building. So they built a flood defence system around it, a bit like the bunding system on a domestic oil tank. The only problem this seems to cause is that while, up till now, the protection system for the new building has worked, no-one seems to have given the same amount of thought to the car parks created for the Civil Servants who work there.

So, come the deluge, as it did last week, guess what happens. The car parks sit under feet of water, no-one can park there, and hundreds of employees have to park in the centre of town, wiping out a good percentage of the available parking places used by us mere mortals.

This rather zany Planning logic is all very well, but we now seem to have a major cost stretching out into the infinite future, for something which doesn’t seem to work, and which also causes an ineradicable and inexorable increase in our Council Tax.

Don’t you just love them.

Anyway, on a more pleasant thread, I was out this morning during what a friend refers to as “Burglars Hours”, ie before 6am, taking pictures of the River Severn, which has burst its banks in a most spectacular way. The river is normally about 50 yards wide, but today is was more like half a mile. These images were taken in a local village, where the Wrekin (1300 feet high) sits quite beautifully as a backdrop. For once, the sun was out and the quality of light was gorgeous.

There's something slightly discordant about pictures which contrast an attractive pictorial view with a subject which is causing people pain, but that's what we have here.

There has to be some compensation for the misery that the water has caused so far.

THE PILL BOX NORMALLY SITS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD

A WIDE VIEW OF THE FLOODS

CRESSAGE BRIDGE

CLOSE UP SHOT OF THE BRIDGE

THE WREKIN WITH FLOODS IN THE FOREGROUND

THE WREKIN WITH CLOUDS AT THE SUMMIT

Tags:

floods,
shrewsbury,
shropshire,
severn,
photography

FLOODS OF TEARS - SHREWSBURY

Today’s theme, rather unsurprisingly, and rather more depressingly, is Water.

Watching the Open Golf Championship at Carnoustie in North East Scotland and the Test Cricket at Lords, I was seduced by the TV images of people not carrying umbrellas, and not wearing waterproofs, sitting in shirtsleeves, drinking a glass of lager and enjoying the sport.

Here in Shropshire, I am seriously wondering what we’ve done to deserve this weather. I have this worrying thought that it’s actually our family’s fault. We bought a new Gazebo a few weeks ago, and ever since its erection, the rain has not stopped. I am seriously thinking of taking it down to see if it is the cause of the problems.

Yesterday, the heavens opened again and stayed open all day. It didn’t just rain, it poured. Our garden was awash and this morning we awoke to find there was no way out of our village. All the roads were closed, and the local brook had changed from a gentle stream into a seriously raging torrent. People whose gardens previously led beautifully and elegantly down to a babbling brook, found their houses and gardens under a couple of feet of dank, muddy water.

DIFFICULT TO READ UNTIL YOU'RE ON TOP OF THIS ONE!

Without seeing it in person, you don’t realise the damage that such an event can have. The water is relentless – it pushes walls over, knocks down fences, turns greenhouses and sheds over, and makes a ghastly mess of what has taken people years to build up.

Very, very sad.

I managed to find a way through the water into Shrewsbury this afternoon, and the river was pushing against the flood defence walls, with the riverside walks being more suited to ducks than humans. I took a few pictures of the mess, and here they are.

THE ENTRANCE TO A NEIGHBOUR'S HOUSE THIS AFTERNOON

THE ENTRANCE TO A SELECT DEVELOPMENT NEAR OUR VILLAGE!

THE ENTRANCE ROAD TO THE NEW HOUSES - THE SHOW HOUSE WAS RUMOURED TO HAVE BEEN SOLD LAST FRIDAY!

A LOCAL GREENHOUSE

THE POOR OWNER'S SHED ADOPTS A NEW ATTITUDE!

SHREWSBURY CYCLEWAY NEAR THE RIVER SEVERN

RIVERSIDE WALKWAY

BENCH FOR TWO

Tags:

floods,shrewsbury,shropshire,photography