The Lyth Valley, looking toward Morecambe Bay The River Kent has burst its banks. A month’s rainfall in 24 hours. On the morning of 7 December structural engineers will be out assessing bridges over the River Kent in Kendal. Victoria Bridge, Miller Bridge, Nether Bridge and Stramongate Bridge closed Sunday night. Only Romney Bridge remains open. The priority is to ensure bridges are sound, and to restore power to households, to hospitals. We are deeply indebted to all who work in dreadful conditions to ensure our safety and comfort.
After being out and about in Kendal and on Scout Scar yesterday images of the flood linger in my mind.A great pile of ruined furniture outside a house flooded by the River Kent, and residents comforting each other by their riverside homes. The life of the river gasping its last on the river bank, as the flood shrank back into its familiar channel. The railings and trees along the river in the clutch of debris showing how high it came at its most severe. I stand beside the fast-flowing river still in spate trying to calculate the destructive power, the massive volume of water that so lately filled that space.
Think Icarus drowning, in Auden’s poem Musee des Beaux Arts. The boy falls from the sky and plunges into the sea whilst the ploughman goes about his work unseeing. The rest of the world gives it a glance and moves on. At least the ploughman has a purpose. The news that people are writing cards and wrapping Christmas presents palls into utter insignificance. Why tell anyone that? Who cares?
Supporting victims of the floods, attending the conference on Climate Change- that’s what the Church is doing. Focusing on the essential. So too the work of the emergency services and the Environment Agency. Radio Cumbria gives us a strong sense of a communities pulling together in tough times.
When I was writing About Scout Scar I began with a study of the Lyth Valley and its hydrology, its drainage. Yesterday I stood up on Scout Scar taking photographs that look abstract and unfamiliar in the flood water, although flooding comes often to the Lyth Valley.
Think Icarus drowning, in Auden’s poem Musee des Beaux Arts. The boy falls from the sky and plunges into the sea whilst the ploughman goes about his work unseeing. The rest of the world gives it a glance and moves on. At least the ploughman has a purpose. The news that people are writing cards and wrapping Christmas presents palls into utter insignificance. Why tell anyone that? Who cares?
Supporting victims of the floods, attending the conference on Climate Change- that’s what the Church is doing. Focusing on the essential. So too the work of the emergency services and the Environment Agency. Radio Cumbria gives us a strong sense of a communities pulling together in tough times.
When I was writing About Scout Scar I began with a study of the Lyth Valley and its hydrology, its drainage. Yesterday I stood up on Scout Scar taking photographs that look abstract and unfamiliar in the flood water, although flooding comes often to the Lyth Valley.
In August, the Lyth Valley was patterned by the cutting of grass to make silage. Now it’s transformed by flood waters. Helsington Pool snakes across the valley, the embankments dark against the flood, to join the River Gilpin which flooded across the A 590 so Barrow and the Furness Peninsula were inaccessible yesterday.
Images focus in on Helsington Pool and the barn beside the road from Brigsteer across the Lyth Valley. The dark line cutting horizontally across the image is the watercourse of Underbarrow Pool., a man-made channel. The road from Brigsteer is so deep underwater there’s no trace of it approaching the barn. Beyond, hedgerows pick it out as it curves sharply to the left and passes four trees deep in water. Dobdale Hill and Savinhill Moss rise just clear of the flood, the least ‘hills’ in Cumbria probably.
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