Flood

I was woken just after four o'clock this morning by the sound of torrential rain. And I mean torrential - hard, bouncing off the sky lights, driving into the window panes sort of rain.

We had a couple of leaks in the conservatory yesterday caused by the sheer volume of water falling and , as usual at this time of year, by leaves in the guttering.

So they started running again , of course, but they were made much worse by the fact that this turned out to be the longest lasting deluge I have ever heard - it was still at full tilt at 6.00am and was, by then, accompanied by the roar of the stream and waterfall above the house which was obviously in spate.

In fact it had burst its banks as this picture shows. I took a number of them at 8.30 - two hours after the rain stopped - once I had got the ladders out and cleared the blocked downpipes.

We both thought this morning there would be reports of flooding and damage all over , but clearly this "extreme weather event" (as they are now called) was very localised. Indeed the sun has been shining on and off since then, though there have been a couple of short, sharp downpours too.