Wet wipeout

First day back in a fortnight and am taking lots of time to explore the damage of the storm. We had flash floods here last month. Over 20cm fell in one afternoon and over the night there was more than 30 centimetres (a foot) of rushing water roaring over the ground. Soil has been moved about. The guest house flooded. A foot of water went into the pool (and you can guess it wasn’t clean) but the main house is standing and so are all the new walls. So not bad really. And luckily Bernard came up to remove the stinking contents of our freezer and fridge. We were without electricity for about five days which was time enough to do all sorts of incubating and destruction. Our rugs and mattresses are out drying in the barn (and looking rather fetching out there I must say) and if I can spend a lot of time with all the windows and doors open the guesthouse won’t smell too bad. The road up to the house suffered a few mudslides. One which took out a lot of the bank and means there is no entry for heavy loads along our road for the rest of the year.

The Ardeche (and Drome) have been declared natural disaster areas. But that’s mainly because none of our councils have enough in their budgets to repair all the roads. Our little track to the house took a beating. So too did our house sign. And the contents of the road heading up to our neighbour Jean-Daniel have been prettily rearranged. Mostly onto our lawns. And speaking of lawns. The main one near the pool took a lot of rushing water. The sooner we can plant up the bank the better our future garden will be.