Curious to see the impact of all the rain we’ve experienced during yet another very wet week (see last week’s photo here), my wife and I went for a walk yesterday along part of the River Bourne, which runs along the valley below our village. There was a brief shower while we were out, and another one later with hail thrown in for good measure, but it’s been dry since, and the forecast for the week ahead finally includes several days that are due to be rain-less, which is good news!

Sure enough, the path along the edge of the river was impassable, as the photo further down this page shows, and quite a stretch has become a swamp which will probably now take several months to dry out, as it’s generally quite dark and damp down here anyway.

I was particularly drawn to the old pipe shown in the photo above, which usually carries just a trickle of water but was certainly in fuller flow yesterday. I regretted leaving my better camera at work, as my phone just doesn’t do it justice, but it hopefully still gives an idea of what it was like.

It has to be said that the damp air, the gloom, and the noise of the occasional bird and the gushing and gurgling water made for quite an interesting atmosphere. I reckon this would be a good place to make a creepy movie, with some kind of swamp monster lurking among the mud and broken trees, where a mauled and dismembered body could lie undiscovered for weeks, half covered in silt and undergrowth. Thankfully the monster remained hidden while we were there, presumably watching us as we stood and took our pictures and as we picked our way along the muddy bank.