Another road story.

My night in the floods 2007 .


It was a Friday 20th July 2007 5.30pm and raining, my truck a 60ft 32 tonne wagon and drag demountable was loaded and I was sipping a cuppa in the gatehouse before settling in for the 250 odd mile night trunk to Hemel Hemsptead and Basingstoke.

The other drivers coming in to work were bringing stories of heavy rains and flooded roads. I finished my tea, bade them farewell and set off for my first drop At Hemel. Two and half hours later after a horrendous M42/M6/M1 journey in monsoon like rains I arrived at the Hemel depot.

I dropped the one box I had on the trailer picked up the empty and a half hour later made off in the rain along the M1/M25/M3 to Basingstoke.

Two hours later I had swapped boxes at Basingstoke, I had a break and began the journey home to Kidderminster wondering If the windscreen wiper motor would last out the run.

The first serious flood I came across was on the A419 at Swindon, but after a little queuing and waved on by the police I ploughed my wagon through, the depth of the water surprised me, it was over the wheels, about three feet deep ,but hey oh a hundred yards later and I was back to warp speed with a clear dual track ahead.

33 miles later the dual carriageway finished just before the air balloon pub, and the long dark descent down Birdlip, a very steep hill that meanders down from the tip of the Cotswolds and on into Gloucester or the M5 whichever your chosen route.

The rain had been relentless all night, a constant downpour the likes of which I have seldom seen. At the bottom of Birdlip I noticed a line of queuing traffic at the slip road to the M5 south, a minute later I saw the same thing on the slip road to the north. All the vehicles had their lights off, I pulled over and asked a driver what the hold up was " motorway's closed, its flooded !" was his response .

So with my knowledge of the local area I decided to carry on along the A417 into Gloucester, from Gloucester I could follow the A38 through Tewkesbury and on into Worcester and home.

Gloucester was barriered off from traffic, the Severn/Avon had flooded most roads and the route up the A38 was most definitely closed.

Plan C was shoot up the golden valley into Cheltenham, up over the Cleeves past Bishops Cleeve golf course, on down into Evesham and home.

After queuing for a hour by the GCHQ and going nowhere I swung the wagon around in a side street and headed around the back of Cheltenham and off up the Cleeve road 'magic' I was on the way up to Bishops Cleeve at about 1pm, be home in a couple of hours tops. So I thought!


The Cleeves are a large range of hills sat the other side of the M5 from the Malverns, if you look carefully as you pass Cheltenham on the M5 north you will see the racecourse nestled snugly at the bottom of the Cleeves, they go for miles, look even more carefully and half way up a road straddles them from north to south two or three hundred feet up, this was the road I was on, in pouring rain, poor visibility: and a blooming great drop on my left.

I know the road well, I often used to travel it on my way to one of my favourite golf courses ( rose cloud ) when the weather was nice and I had a day off. Tonight it was different, no other traffic had braved the hilly pass and a dark steep foreboding road greeted my headlights.

It was just past the golf course where sometimes we stop at a roadside spring and cool our heads that I had the first taste of the impending nightmare.

The spring which was never ever more than a trickle and was culverted under the road was looming, my drivers window was half open, I had half a ear on the local news and in the distance I could ld make out the long line of stationary traffic on the M5 two hundred or so feet below me and a mile or two to my left. My heart missed a beat and I broke out into a cold sweat as a thunderous roar to my right awoke me from my drivers trance, I looked at the area the rush of noise was coming from and just 15 feet from my window was a 20 foot high wall of cascading mud that was rushing down the Gully that was usually a roadside spring, it was more than the length of my truck wide and I was by now halfway past it. it was deafening and scary. As I drove past it my steering became light and the wagon seemed to struggle for grip, from pure instinct only: I gunned it: I got grip, I looked in the mirror as my trailer moved out to the left, I gunned it some more and the trailer straightened up behind me. The road over the culvert was collapsing: the weight of my truck and the continual pounding of thousands of gallons of muddy water had washed away the foundations below the road and I had just driven a empty lorry that weighed 18 tons over it, phew: close!

I plodded on along the A435 through the murky night cautiously. At a suitable layby I pulled over and lit a fag. My hands shook as I offered the lighter to the ciggy. In the next few days newspapers showed pictures of a culvert, it was a gaping 80 foot hole where a road once was.

I knew a short cut, a good country lane I had used many a time in good weather and slipped off down it hoping this would claw back some of my journey time.

A mile or so later I came to a halt behind a Argos lorry, I jumped out and asked the driver what the hold up was, he pointed to a quarter mile stretch of flooded road and said " that " a full blown river had coursed its way across the fields and was now in full flow along the lane, cars were being swept away as though they were made of balsa wood, there was no way I could drive through that, no choice but to reverse the mile or so back down the lane, I did it despite the battering rain , lack of light and the odd bit of oncoming traffic, I eventually reversed into a farmers gate , turned around and carried on towards Evesham on the more usual route.

Eventually I reached the A46 Tewkesbury to Evesham main road, by now I had successfully steered my truck through countless window high floods, passed hundreds of abandoned cars and stranded motorists, and seen every pub along the way crammed with cars and wet dishevelled drivers huddled in them seeking shelter from the relentless rain. It was a gloomy sight!

500 yards up the A46 I met the mother of all flooded roads, a mile of brown 4ft deep water barred my way on and up into Evesham, I stopped weighed up the situ and decided to go for it.

The water was at times above the bottom of my passenger window ,but the exhaust fed out above the cab so I pressed on. Half way through a lorry was coming the other way, he slowed and asked if the M5 was open. To my utter astonishment it was a school pal of mine Phil: who had also worked on the same haulage firm as me in my early days, we shook hands from window to window wished each other luck and I have not seen him since - he's not lost or anything, I just haven't seen him!

I made it to Evesham by 04.30 , went into a 24 hour Tesco for some snacks and had another break, I spoke to a local policeman while on my break he said the new raised section of road to Stratford was open.

I decided this route would be my way home. In the dawn light the raised section of road revealed the full extent of the nights disaster , on both sides of the road and as far as the eye could see was mile upon mile of flooded fields, it was like a disaster scene in a foreign land, dead animals were everywhere, houses were flooded up to their roof tops and the brown sea extended beyond the horizon. One night's rain had caused this, the Avon and the Severn were unable to cope, the overflow extended out from them engulfing anything in its way, caravans, animals, homes, and cars - devastation.

Eventually I arrived back in our yard at 9 am, there was a brown tidemark around my lorry just below the windscreen, vegetation hung from every possible hold on the truck and it took me four hours of hard scrubbing to get it clean.

No other driver had left the yard that night, just a half hour after I had gone the boss phoned in and called off all night runs, I had my phone off that night - Friday the 20th of July 2007. Two months rain fell in 14 hours and I drove nearly 250 miles in it!

The other guys still talk about my epic night and I often wonder why I didn't just pull over turn on my night heater and go to sleep in the bunk -- sometimes you just have to go for it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/6909575.stm


Note. I am not going to make an habit of these stories!

Anyhow, here are some aftermath pictures

 

Top story Malc. I’m not quite sure why you didn’t pull over either! I certainly would have

Good job the wagon wasn’t loaded or you may have collapsed the culvert earlier.

My dad knew someone whose house was flooded and they were still not sorted over a year later.

 

Years in some cases MC

 

You can have a few of the X rated stories when we're around the camp fire mate.

 

A bit of insight into the devastation caused in a few hours. My semi light hearted reflection doesn’t really show the very severe damage and impact that day’s events had on the Gloucestershire community. I simply tried to make light of my own situation.

http://thefloods.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/

 

I remember that day/night clearly. I was working at what was my old Secondary School in Bournville and the Bourn Brook ran alongside the school - whilst sitting listening to my old History teacher (now a friend at at the time colleague )giving his goodbye speech - we were all aware that the rain was heavier than before. We could see the brook (burn/beck/river) overflowing like it never had before and the park opposite the school was almost completely flooded.

Mr Fowler cut short his farewells and headed off to his home in a a village near you Malc (can't remember it's name). He said last time there was a flood his village was cut off and he had to stay in a hotel for a few days.

Anyway, I went to pick up my wife and there was flooding around her school from a drainage channel next to the school - I had to literally grab a couple of kids by their collars to stop them ending up in the channel.

As the night went on, we got a call from a family friend who had a static in Evesham where she was currently staying - I headed off in the T25 and ended up collecting a bus load of pensioners (I think there was 8 of them) and two cats, all squashed into the camper. The water was coming in the front doors as I picked them up from the end of the lane where the caravan site was. I would have gone back to collect a few more, but the road was closed and I found out that a local farmer and family was doing runs in their 4x4s in local area. I pulled into a McDonalds on the A46 (or was it the A435 still) it was full of people in the same prediciment - Maccies gave out free hot drinks and food.

Keep the stories coming Malc

 

That was very good of you to do that. Well done you Louey for having the foresight to help people, all I wanted to do was get myself home safely.

Was the village Mr Fowler lived in near Hawford Worcester. They had it really bad from the Salwarp flooding

 

Might do. In fact....

Nahh, best not!

 

Incidentally. Bourneville / Cadbury have a family connection. They were Quakers and friends of my great great grandfather Alderman George baker. He was Birmingham mayor twice in the late 1860's 70's. he also built the gothic mansion beau castle with the help of his friend John ruskin the art critic. It's the one on the right of Bewdley bypass by the wyre forest.

 

Thanks - it was a friend in need. We call Ellen our Fairy Godmother so we're always there for her as she has been for us.

Not sure about the village name. I thought it was nearer Bewdley.

 

I spent from when I was 5 till I was in my 20s in Selly Oak, next to Bournville. I did my paper round in Bournville (the smell of chocolate from the factory in the morning ) and went to school there too.