Another casualty

We were woken by an enormous noise in the night. After looking all around the house and out of every window we couldn't see any likely cause, so we went back to sleep.

On our walk through the Den this morning, we discovered the source of the noise - this majestic old beech had been so thoroughly undermined by the flood-water two days ago, that in the high winds overnight it snapped its anchor roots and smashed down onto our side of the bank, taking a number of smaller trees and one of the old dead elms with it.

Further up the Den the floods have deposited silt banks, and there is a phenomenal amount of debris in strange places, marking the height of the floods. I fear that we'll have more flooding, because many broken branches have lodged themselves across the burn causing it to dam up, and forcing the water to find new paths.

Only last year the community council was debating putting a gate across the burn beside one of the road bridges. If that had gone through, the amount of debris washed down on Friday would have all lodged in that one place causing the car park and the road to flood much, much worse than it actually did. Nature has her own way of clearing things - let's leave her to it in this case, please.