Flood Defences

I've blogged before (Springtime!) about the groundwater levels around the house, since the major storm on 23rd December we've again been suffering from water seeping out of the ground and coming across the driveway. One of the tasks we've had on our "to-do" list for a while is to get an interceptor drain dug to pick up this water, at the same time we wanted to put a concrete floor in our outbuilding known as "The Grange". We had asked Kevin from Furniss Terrassements back (in 2011 he had laid the flooring in the barn and dug the drainage that has progressively dried out the stone walls).

The weather has been foul of course and the time that Kevin was with us distinguished itself with rain, hail and - bizarrely - two sunny lunchtimes when we could sit outside.

The before picture - as Kevin gets to work the groundwater covers the drive

The new Grange floor installed

As the ground at the back of the Grange slopes up the drainage ditch was deep

The water level in the ground is evident in this picture taken before the drainage pipes were connected

18 tonnes of gravel turned up for the trenches and to re-surface our open area

A big improvement ......

As the drain is connected the water starts to flow ...

And flow and flow ....

As soon as the drain started to work the surface water disappeared all the way along the drive. Of course its hydrographics and physics and somewhere along the way I've probably done the equations to describe what happened, how fast the water flowed and what volume comes out every hour. But still - like machines that harvest peas and how planes fly - knowing the "how" doesn't take away the "wow".

And, after all the rain recently, the drain is still flowing and the drive is still dry.

Blown Away .....

The awful January weather has seamlessly slipped into awful February weather. As I write this the wind and rain are hammering against the windows - again. We have 100 kph winds and 25mm of rain forecast for tonight ....

On Saturday we went to La Baule to watch the France-England rugby match in a bar with the hockey club. Many fields were flooded on the way and the salt marshes looked like lakes (normally they just look like fields with reeds growing in them - I only know they are salt marshes from looking at the map). After we had just missed out 24-26 on another year's bragging rights the television switched to news coverage of the weather; from Biarritz through Bayonne, Aquitaine and into Bretagne the pictures looked almost the same as the ones we had been watching the evening before from Cornwall, Somerset, Wales and Scotland.

There are many historical links between the Atlantic coasts of Britain, Ireland and France. They are all linked by suffering from the same terrible weather as well this winter.

Read in High Places .... ?

It seems that the blog may be attracting a wider readership than I thought.

After my sardonic comments about M. Hollande's press conference - and my willingness to pay for Le President's morning after the night before croissants - we received an advance tax demand. That's the first time we've received that from les impots.

Disappointingly there seems to be a more mundane explanation. Our friends Sue and Steve had received one too for the first time (they've been here for many years) so it seems it's simply the French government trying to prop up its cash-flow to fill the €30 Billion budget gap it's heading for next year.

I will, however, certainly check the blog followers carefully in case the name F. Hollande should appear ;o)