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~ Living life as if someone left the gate open! Taking the chance and seeing what happens

RosiesFrenchadventure.com

Tag Archives: Floods

A sense of community: Torrents

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by RosieJoseph in a sense of community, Reflections, The continuing adventure, The seasons

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

a sense of community, community, ditches, extreme weather, flodd planning, flood contingencies, flood planning, Floods, heavy rain, hoarfrost, looking after others, making plans, Seasonal weather, Seasons, seasons in France

I have shared in the last year how rivers have burst their banks here, and people have been flooded, not least when Rich got stuck at a job.

The winters have ben warmer than we first arrived, who can forget theHoarfrost one winter and the freeze when our gas froze?

But generally the winters have been warmer but incredibly wet. We can deny global warming as much as we want, but it clearly here, with increasingly wet, torrential weather in autumn and the winter and droughts in the summer.

This year the forecast for our region is for a wet winter. Over the past couple of years rivers have burst their banks on occasions and last year the Mayenne river was drained and dredged. This year they are taking it further:

Throughout this region of France, and in most regions, there are ditches that run alongside the roads. I wrote only recently of how our ditch was blocked and caused problems with our cess. Well last week up pulled a digger and dumper truck, and each and every ditch along our road was cleared out, including ours which was a result!

When I asked Marc our neighbour he said it was the commune who had arranged for all of the ditches to be dug out, and pipes fitted under the road to take any excess water down to the river. Our ditch is now clear and RD has breathed a sigh of relief because clearing that out would have been hard work.

The commune are preparing because they know that the long term forecasts are for heavy rain, even over the past few weeks we have had torrential rain, with three inches of rain in just one night! Add that the long heavy showers we have had for most of the days in the last few weeks, and our ditch was over a quarter full. But as you can see it is now virtually empty again. Drainage systems work!

But it is not just here work has been carried out in the other surrounding small towns and villages to ensure that contingencies are in place.

It frustrates me when I watch on TV the awful situation that the people of Yorkshire find themselves in due to recent rainstorms in England; with the government refusing to call it a state of emergency. Yes there is community in that people help each other, but where is the sense of community where those who are meant to support the people are concerned? Why did they not look at long term forecasts? When was the last time the rivers were dredged, or the drains cleared out, or ditches dug? Where is the sense of community to the community? This is not aimed at one political party, because this has been something that has been going on for so long. Too long! And it makes me so frustrated.

Since living here I have realised just how much RD and I had lost our sense of community, and I am glad for the lesson I have learnt since living here.

Wherever we end up in the future, it will need to be somewhere with a sense of community.

Rosie

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And the rivers became raging torrents!

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by RosieJoseph in The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Floods, hog roast, monsoons, Rain, rivers, rivers bursting, torrent, torrential rains, trapped, trapped vehicles, unseasonal weather, weddings

The sun has finally peeked through the clouds, after four days and nights of virtually constant rain, sometimes the type of rain that comes with a monsoon.

The weir that is so pretty in our town is now invisible the water is such a raging torrent

Our friends attended what should have been a wonderful June wedding on Saturday, but the rain was so torrential they decided to return home to check their guests were okay, and that the electricity had not been affected (a common thing out here in bad weather, as the electricity runs overground because France is so vast). There they were in their wedding attire desperately trying to get their four wheel drive car out of the mud, it was so entrenched. By the time they got home they were covered in mud, and toasted the ‘happy’ couple with a beer and a glass of champagne, thankfully with the electricity in situ. But the poor wedding party fared worse, they lost their electricity, which meant the hog roast was off the menu as was the disco!

Yesterday the rain was still in play, and poor hubby went off to work at a friends only to find himself trapped as the river at the bottom of their garden exploded into the garden and up to the house. His van is still trapped there, and he had to drive one if their vehicles home last night! He had to climb through the undergrowth to get out if the garden, it was that or swim!

It appears that France has had fifty days rainfall in just two days. People have died and all of the rivers have succumbed to the water and become lakes instead.

Sort of makes our leaks in the kitchen pale into insignificance…

Moisy

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This Winter; it is what it is…….

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by RosieJoseph in Reflections, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

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Tags

Burst rivers, Floods, Go with the flow, It is what it is, Low temperatures, Pegging washing out, Rain, Snow, Stress, Winter, Worry

I have always had a saying in life, never knew where I got it from, and never really fully understood it until now, and that is “It is what it is, and it ain’t what it ain’t!!”

This winter has been the wettest winter in France for over one hundred years!!

Most of the rivers have burst their banks, including the tributary that runs along the bottom of our valley to the Varenne River in Ambrieres Les Vallees; where the weir is now a raging waterfall..

image

River and Wier Jan 2018
River overflowing January 2018
Wier Jan 2018

The volume of rainfall has not helped our moldy walls and, up until this week, the ground is literally sodden. It has only been since the weekend that our terrace has actually been dry for the first time in three months!!

But due to this the good thing is that it has not been freezing cold, and in fact has only gone below zero degrees about three times all winter.

Two weeks ago we went for a coffee in Mayenne and parked by the river where the benches that I sat on in the summer were in the river, and half of the car parking facilities had disappeared; and, guess what? It was raining!

 

We met a friend and walked the dogs into the town, had a coffee, walked back to the car and the topic of conversation was the rain and how both Rich and the friend wished it would just stop raining, how the rain was making them feel down, just grey and wet all the time. I didn’t join in the conversation, it was raining nothing I could do nothing about it, so no point in harboring on it.

As we were driving home Rich asked me “Doesn’t the rain get to you? Isn’t it getting on your nerves?” To which I replied “No, it is what it is and it ain’t what it ain’t.”

“How can it not get to you?” Rich asked, and my reply was because I cannot change it; what is the point in stressing about something that I have no control over? I cannot change the weather, I like the colour grey, the weather is not hurting me, it is just wet, and I knew that when the sun shone again (which it has but more of that in a moment) it would just make me appreciate it more. I apply this way of thinking more and more in my life, if I cannot change it (like the cesspit) then why sit and worry about it? It won’t change it but it will stop me having an open mind and letting other things, good things come my way, it will make me miserable.

So this week, for the first time in a long time the sun shone, and it has got really cold; and guess what? I really appreciated it!!! I appreciated the stinging that I felt in my hands and on my face when I came in from the cold. I appreciated being able to peg my washing out (a favourite thing of mine all my life, you cannot beat the smell of line dried washing) I appreciated the warmth of my home when I came in – because it is warmer and gets warmer every day, because we go with the flow and and take life as it comes.

Snow is now predicted this week, and extremely low temperatures.

It is what it is, it ain’t what it ain’t!!!

Moisy

 

 

 

 

 

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