It rained and then it rained some more.


Well it is the first day of Wimbledon and centre court doesn't have a roof so what do you expect? But we're several hundred miles north of London - apparently this doesn't matter to the weather gods we're getting rain and lots of it by the bucket-load every minute. The ground is saturated, the plants are battered and bowed, the sheep are soggy and be-draggled, roads closed, rivers bursting their banks, puddles turning into ponds and ponds expanding to become lakes before over flowing. The village pond which for years has been a dry sheltered area is now full and threatening to flood the main street. Fortunately the two rivers which bound Goathland on two sides, Eller Beck to the east and West Beck to the west are both in ravines and around a hundred feet below the main village including the CJS Office so the only risk of flooding comes from the sodden fields. Unfortunately The Moorlands was built on one of the village duck ponds (drained before building obviously!), the building is several feet above ground level but the garden is a foot below the surrounding proprieties and the road and is therefore reliably wet or right now soaked and requires wellies to get around, I think it will be waders by going home time.
Heaven for Labradors who insist on going out at least every half hour to check if the water level is deep enough for swimming - not yet - and then bringing as much water as their coats will hold back indoors to shake with great abandon all over everything; so far none of our bits of electrical stuff has gone fizz bang but I'm sure it's only a matter of time……