For the first time in a long time, it seems like the end of the winter rains might be in sight. As I’ve previously mentioned here, we technically live in a flood risk area. While we’re told our street has never flooded, it’s difficult not to worry when people on the news say that no one has ever seen their area flood before, yet there they are, with flood waters invading their home. Abingdon didn’t fare too badly throughout February, as most of the water headed to the natural floodplains. Sandbags were available, though we picked up ours back in January (I say ‘we’, I mean my OH did. I can’t actually pick one up!) Fortunately, despite a few hairy moments, it seems that most people in Abingdon were okay, though traffic was ‘interesting’ to say the least! Here are a few snaps of the recent floods.

The writing on the bridge is a great way of knowing how much the river levels change. I took this on a Saturday morning, just over a week ago. By the evening, it had risen quite a bit, but then dropped by the Sunday morning.

Normally, you can walk down to the end of this slip and Poppy likes to sniff all the debris that accumulates there. Not when it’s like this, however. She likes to give it a wide berth.

This is one of our favourite Abingdon walks, especially in the summer and I wrote about it last year. This is how it was just over a week ago. Poppy and I got caught in a pretty nasty hail storm while I was taking these. Neither of us were amused! However, below is what it looked like on Sunday.

Unbelievable right?! Just in one week, the water level dropped loads, though we’ve seen how much more water would be needed for us to really start worrying about flooding.

Another one of our favourite walks is along the upper part of the Ock. This area flooded so much that it closed Tesco as the car park was submerged, which triggered apocalyptic shopping at Waitrose! Lol. Fortunately, just over a week later, it was looking much better.

Even Poppy fancied exploring the floods a little bit more closely! (We stayed well away from the edge, following all the safety advice!)

In the storm over the weekend, we lost a tile. I know. Bad times. However, Albert Park lost this giant tree, as well as a smaller tree and lots and lots of branches, covered in squirrel scent, which Poppy had to stop and sniff. The tree has left a hole in the hedge and the massive hole in the ground from the roots has been filled in. It was pretty scary and Poppy was pretty spooked by the wind. I hope you’re all safe and dry and didn’t suffer much damage in recent storms.