Depth gauge

This road in Wellow in Hampshire is often used as a shortcut connecting two parts of the village either side of the River Blackwater which rises in the adjoining county of Wiltshire and flows through Hampshire to become a tributary of the River Test.

At this point it looked little more than a stream today, but I wasn’t chancing it by trying to drive across the ford.

It may look only a few inches deep, and the depth gauge situated in the river itself should not have alarmed me.

But I have seen the river swollen by rain and suddenly become deceptively deep at this point with a correspondingly fast current. Some years ago the local farmer told me he was frequently towing cars out of the water with a tractor.

Admittedly there was a roadside sign today saying the road was blocked, so perhaps I should have known better and turned round at that point. As it was it meant reversing some distance to turn round.