The damage caused by flooding and the force of water, due to the abnormally heavy rainfall in January, continued during February. Holes appeared in roads, and here in Blackden the farm track from Station Road to Blackden Firs was interrupted by the collapse of the bridge at the bottom of the valley. Holes that at first were small enough to manoeuvre around by confident drivers became bigger, until on 22nd February East Cheshire Borough Council closed the bridge.
The rain has also eroded the track from the bridge up to Toad Hall. This last stretch is now worse than it has been for fifty years. The wood at the side of the track, which was an adventure playground for our children fifty years ago, is flooded.
The flood flows over the track, recreating the ford that must have originally existed there.
The combination of the erosion caused by the weather and the isolation due to Covid 19 restrictions have produced conditions similar to those of life at Blackden over fifty years ago. Having the basic necessities of food, warmth and a dry house were what we all worked for. Such luxuries as eating out and holidays abroad were not common; and few houses in Blackden had telephones. Now almost everybody has a mobile and virtual access to the world.
In the 1950s and 60s, the stretch of track from the bridge to Toad Hall was impassable for ordinary cars in wet weather. Even our Morris Minor, which was so light we could bounce it out of most sticky places, couldn’t make its way up. We would drive in, along the front of Yew Tree farm, on a stretch of the track that is now an overgrown footpath, and park the car by a gate, nearly a quarter of a mile from Toad Hall. We could see our house across the valley, but it felt a long trudge through the mud in the heavy wellingtons and the thick plastic macs that everybody wore at that time.
We now take that same walk with care and a stick to support us on the potholed and slippery track. The route is the same, but the view now is of the Old Medicine House.
There is a silver lining to the heavy rain that has eroded roads and tracks and made getting about difficult; where the drainage is good, bulbs benefit from the moisture. On the banks of the flooded wood, snowdrops have appeared where none of us can remember seeing them before.
