A Tale of Two Reservoirs

What a weekend.  We spent much of it huddled by the fire in Herbie while the rain lashed and the gale blew outside. However we did venture out on your behalf to see if all this rain is doing any good canalwise.  The water level at our mooring is certainly up a good three or four inches, and as that’s on a twenty mile pound, that’s a lot of water.

The red boards are out all down the Thames, the radio reports flooding all over the place, surely this is going to make up the canal reservoir shortages. On Saturday we braved the weather  out to look again at Welford reservoir.  You may recall that when I posted my last picture of it, only about a month ago, it looked like this.

Well on Saturday it looked like this:

Not full by any means, but coming along really well.  A couple more comparisons:

Before

After

I think that might mean it’s now three metres deeper!

So is it time to call off the restrictions and plug the hosepipes back in?  We decided to do another check on the way home today, and diverted via Marsworth to see the situation at Startops reservoir.  Dodging the puddles in the car park, I was optimistic as we approached the steps up the reservoir bank, which by the way was covered in huge numbers of dandelions.

Up the steps and over the top, and I have to admit our hearts sank.  This is what we saw.

Doh. As you can see it has a long long way to go

It hardly looks better than it did in January.

There might be water gushing down our rivers, but that’ll all end up in the sea.  The reservoirs and aquifers tell a different story.  So don’t complain yet about rainy weather, we still need lots more.