(on a much smaller scale than some poor souls…)
Saturday nearly didn’t get off to a good start at all when my usual friendly lady at the car hire place was stuck in floods (!) and I had to deal with a very grumpy replacement who threatened not to release the car at all and then charged me an extra £300 for the privilege (it’s usually about £47 for the weekend).
I thought I’d be fine on the M4 from us and only have to worry about navigating lots nearer the destination. Not so – roadworks on the main road from Swansea out to the motorway meant a 20 minute diversion before I’d even left home, but once I’d joined it was fine and easy (a bit grey and damp, threatening sky, but not actually chucking it down) until england.
Turning north between Bristol and Swindon aiming for Cirencester I found myself in a very slow moving queue of traffic – I moved four car lengths in 20 minutes – only 10 miles south of where I was meeting parents for lunch before the wedding. Eventually realising (via 2 radio traffic updates and a text from my brother further up the same stretch) that if I stuck it out on that road I would not only miss lunch but probably the wedding too, I attempted to circumnavigate the queues and set off cross country on little, less trafficky lanes.
A fantastic mad image that will stay with me a long time – on a bridge crossing the thames between Inglesham and Lechlade in Gloucestershire I could see the trees that used to line each bank, and the long boats that used to moor along the edge – all of which were in the very middle of a vast wide swathe encompassing several fields and a village either side. Having coped with 8 or so inches of water (driving slowly and praying I wouldn’t have to stop because I didn’t know how low my exhaust in the hire car was!) and thinking I’d come through the worst of it, the next major hazard was tourists with cameras in the road on the very narrow bridge.
An hour after my first enthusiastic “nearly with you” progress report to my parents, I was still 10 miles away from destination, in another direction. Setting out from Lechlade I was turned back by a farmer in wellies and waders up to his armpits in water on the main road I had been hoping to take – so near and yet so far. All that stood between me and my lunch – not to mention the time before the wedding in which I could eat and change and catch up with my family decreasing fast – was this pessimistic chap and the small matter of water that was deeper than a fire-engine’s wheels (I only know this because there was one stranded in the lake ahead of me – a lake that had only recently been a fairly major A road).
Despairing, I turned back to Lechlade and parked outside a pub – in a two hour limited waiting place. I wrote a long and friendly letter to any possible passing traffic warden trying to explain my flood victim status and begging not to be booked, specially as it was a hire car, and left it on the dashboard. I rang mum again and said I didn’t think I could possibly, physically, actually, in any way get there. She told me to sit tight as my brother was on his way to rescue me – in a tractor!
We made it to the cousin who was giving us lunch, and in fourteen minutes flat I had lunch, changed into wedding kit and left again, to arrive at the church with 5 minutes to spare – luckily the bride was running even later, also due to the weather. There was a rather lovely dunkirk spirit – that great British determination to carry on despite it all – and spare wellies being handed out by the ushers!
I was lucky – I passed many abandoned cars and bedraggled families. I was lucky – I made it to a joyous gathering of friends and family, and home again. The news this week is making me realise how lucky – and how many people are facing far greater hardships than getting to the church on time! My thoughts and prayers are with those who are still in deep water.
(the rest of the planning is still in the details stage – friends who will be married a fortnight before and a fortnight after me are already far more organised!!)