Storm Angus.

Woke up this morning to find that Storm Angus had washed away the drive. It was almost the worst damage I've seen with the rut on the left hand side at least 6" deep and up to 12" wide all the way to the top of the slope. No prizes for guessing what I spent the rest of the day doing.

I did my best to pace myself, better to put only a small amount of gravel in the wheelbarrow each time than wear myself out before the job is done. It was when I took my  first break that I read about the flooding in the local area and realised we had got off quite lightly. With more heavy rain due in the early hours of tomorrow morning I went up and reinforced the dams putting wood right across the road and tried to make sure that any water coming down the road is diverted before it washes away the drive again. Peter finds it very frustrating that his arthritis stops him from helping me with such manual labour but that's just the way it is.

The path in the bog garden is once more covered in mud and down by the steps there is a good 12" of silt and mud washed up onto the bank.

Here's the drive with the left hand side filled in. I got about half-way down the other side before I stopped for the day. No matter how much raking I do there's never enough gravel to fill the ruts back up again so I'll have to dig some gravel out of the stream to finish off the job. Also ground water continued to flow into that side from the top corner of the lawn. I dug a channel across the grass to divert the ground water into the central ditch to help stop the constant eroding of that side of the drive. I've done as much as I can to prevent losing the drive again tonight as this sort of work isn't good for my back either.