… rain and more rain. It rained over night and it continued to rain all day.
A landscape photographer friend, Keith, was intending to drive up to join us today. He’s booked in to a guest house nearby for the week. Given the weather today and the very similar forecast for tomorrow, we half expected him to cancel. We would not have blamed him. But no, he went for it. He even managed to locate us taking shelter in Guillaume before going to check in to his guest house. [The guest house, incidentally, is up for sale – £845K, if you’re interested.]
In between today’s rain and tomorrow’s rain, the weather forecast was suggesting an hour or two of sunny spells around 6:00-8:00 PM. Sure enough, as we were introducing Keith to Guillaume over a cup of tea, the clouds did appear to begin lifting. Francine set off for the top of Derwent Water (again) while Keith set off to check in. He and I joined Francine a little later.
The sun did put in a guest appearance, as did all the stir-crazy people in the vicinity, both tourists and locals alike, I suspect. I’m not sure whether the most staggering aspect of the scene that greeted us was the fact that the sun was, indeed, present or the fact that the water level in Derwent Water had increased so dramatically in two days. Here’s a before and after pair of pictures, admittedly from slightly different angles but you’ll see what I’m getting at.
Concentrate on the end of the boat dock with its supporting wooden posts. Look at the full sized version of the first image and you should be able to make out a Greylag Goose (Anser anser) calmly swimming, very considerately, just beyond the end of the dock and showing up against the hull of the boat just beyond. The Greylag’s head appears to be a tad below the level of the dock. Now look at the second picture; the end of the boat doc is at best level with the surface of the water – actually I think it’s very slightly submerged.
OK, so how tall is a swimming Greylag Goose? I’d say somewhere between 1 and 2 feet, roughly 18 in/0.5 m. A swift web search during one of those odd occasions when 3G has been working, told me that Derwent Water covers an area of 5.18 km2 or 5,180,000 m2. If that lot is now ~0.5 m deeper, we’re looking at an extra 2,590,000 m3 of water that has flowed or fallen into Derwent Water over the last 48 hours. A cubic metre is 220 gallons. That’s over half a billion gallons of water extra. Yikes!
For a more photogenic illustration of the increase in water level, this gate was clear of the water when we arrived.
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