The worst local floods in 60 years

I started the day again with curlews on the beach, and did get a better picture. In fact I was ready with my lens and snapping when a warning cry from a curlew announced to my subject that another bird was threatening. My subject took off from the water's edge and by the time it had moved two yards, (I could check from the other continuous pictures I had) a large oystercatcher came at it from higher up the beach, closely followed by a second curlew which was flying even faster. The second curlew's presence forced the oystercatcher away and the two curlews flew off together out to sea at a height of about two feet from the water. Fascinating way to start the day.

It got more interesting. By the time I had dressed, eaten breakfast, had coffee and painted another quick coat of emulsion on the last of the curtain rails, the rain started falling. I had watched the sky darkening across the loch in the direction of Oban and then the mists arrived followed by darker clouds and rain. At first it didn't seem too different to normal weather. But it continued to get heavier and heavier, so that the gutters completely overflowed and the sound of the rain was ominous. I ventured out to move the car and was saturated within two yards.

After a while it passed and the loch became a calm flat stretch of water again. When there was only a slight drizzle, I ventured out again to see the burn which flows beside the house in a deep gully with concrete walls to protect the buildings. I took this picture to show the waves of water as they emerge form under the road bridge. Behind me the burn flows on for about twenty yards and then opens out as it reaches the stoney beach and the loch. The burn has been virtually dry for weeks and this happened within thirty minutes.

Soon after Helena and I went to Oban to dump yet more rubbish, partly at a charity shop and the rest at the tip, before we we to have a cheap meal, offer of seafood on the seafront. Light rain fell intermittently but nothing untoward. By the time we returned back to the house at North Connel, we came across a police car beside the loch where the road was by now completely flooded where a new burn had marched through a garden and off out to sea.

At Nanno's house, which was only about four hundred yards further along the loch, we found that her house had missed being completely flooded by inches as the burn had backed up and trees and stones and all sorts of debris were littering the road and the adjacent land. As I look out of the window across the loch I can see many trees and branches floating way out from the shore.. The whole shape of the shoreline has now changed and where yesterday you could walk across the stones in the burn as it flowed across the beach, today there was rent in the beach many feet deep and the burn was now a small river.

Not long after tour return Helena told me to come outside as a reporter from the Oban Times was interviewing her mother about the floods. Apparently there had been warning reports on the local radio. Nanno told him about the famous flood of 1953 when the original garden of this house had been washed away completely and the concrete wall had been erected to stop any further erosion. I had no idea it could get hat bad. So all in all a day to remember and this blip will remind me of how it all began.

Woodpeckers has blipped another view from behind the house