Friday 15th June 2007

11.4C and 39.6mm rain in the last 24Hrs,clear but cloudy @ 07:00am Unloaded a load of fert first thing then took the Land Rover to Leversedges for its MOT Thomas brought me back. I used Mums car to pop Ette to the station and go to the bank. After dinner Thomas and I started to look at tidying up fert bags, then Tony of Moores Logistic came for a load of wheat for Ed Harris, He had come from delivering a load of cake to Ledwyche for the cattle there, about half an hour after he had left without a sheet the heavens opened. I then had a call to unload another load of fertiliser. As I was waiting to get on the A49 there was forked lightening all around and it was pouring with rain. The road was flooded at Onibury Townhall and it was running full width down the road about 6inches deep. By the keepers cottage it was over the front axle of the loader, It was coming out of all gateways above the road like a torrent, at the bottom of the Norton lane it had washed all the stone and gravel onto the road to about 12inches deep. The lorry was parked just the onibury side of the gates and the water was going over the second bar of the gates about 2'6" up, down the yard through the cattle sheds and it had blown the gates at the bottom of the yard out. There was now too much soil on the road behind the lorry for him to reverse so I went back to Coppy house to get the dirt shovell, through Onibury which was by now totally impassable at the village hall by most vechiles the torrent on the road was deeper, but the brand hill side of the A49 there was much less rain. When I got back to Norton the rain had eased and I moved about 100 ton of soil from behind the lorry and we were able to unload it about 2hours late. Then I had to tidy the rest of the soil and stone up there was another 60 tonnes at the bottom of the lane and about 150tons along the Vernald common road it took until about 8:00 pm when the Manitou was almost out of diesel. Peter Vaughan also sent his loader and brush up to help. We had about 40 mm of rain in 2 hours.