It's been raining really hard for a day and a night. I woke up just after six this morning to find the Black Lynn, the burn at the bottom of our garden, having risen above its banks and inching up towards our garden fence.
As I type these lines (ca. 08:30am), about one third of the recently-cleared wilderness is flooded but the waters are receding. There's a distinct whiff of human excrement in the air, so the rumour that raw sewage goes straight into the burn is probably true.
My neighbours have told me floods like this happen on a regular basis.
I can only say that someone made a big mistake when they "renovated" the burn crossing by simply putting a concrete slab down where, from the looks of the stone wall, there once was a small arched bridge. This means that clearance is at least twenty to twenty-five centimetres (about ten inches) less than before. What's more, two culverts run below the slab, further reducing clearance, the lower one skimming the surface of the water even on a good day:
Until recently, the riverbed was chock full of litter: wooden planks, broken scooters, rope, plastic bottles, a traffic cone, an old tyre, some rusting box-like thing that may once have been an oven -- see for yourself:
Some photos now to document the beginnings of the flood event before dawn, the cusp and the receding of the waters.
I started taking photos at 06:17, as the water was beginning to creep across the lane that crosses the burn:
At 08:22 the burn continues to rush along its concrete trough. Above the bridge, it still spreads out into the newly-cleared "community garden" . I observed quite a few people walking down the lane from across the stream and having to turn back to take the long way around.
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