Country

Wide Wednesday: Countryside

"I know a place not far from here
Where lifes sweet perfume fills the air
And if you want I'll take you there
If you want I'll take you there

Into the light out of the dark
Where only love can heal your heart
And if you want I'll make a start
If you want I'll make a start

This place I say - half hour away
Is that so far to go - so near
And further on we'll find the time
And lose the discontent we feel - that we feel

I feel the time we've yet to reach
Is not within our own belief
But I feel sure that time'll come
If it goes on at all, said - if it goes on at all, whoa - if it goes on at all,
Hey - it goes on and on and on and on

I know a place not far from here
Where fresh cut grass will fill your hair
And if you want we'll lay a while there
If you want we'll lay a while there
If you want we'll lay a while there."

Paul Weller ~ Country

Thanks as ever to Bob of Bob's Blips for the topic "Countryside" for this week's Wide Wednesday challenge.  I've taken this shot from a field that is close to where I lived as I was growing up.  My parents moved there when I was 8, and our house was just a short walk from these fields at the edge of the town through which the river Chew flows sluggishly on this warm May afternoon. If you were standing, rather than crouching to look at this dandelion clock, you would be able to see the river in the valley below you.

The Chew flows sluggishly for most of the time, although this is the 50th anniversary of the Great Flood (as it is known locally)  which washed away many bridges over the river overnight, and killed 8 people, 4 of them in a car on one of the bridges.  

I still remember the surprise of waking up to find that school was cancelled the next morning.

1968 had already been a very wet Summer when on 10 July over 5 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours. The intensity of the downpour increased as the day wore on, with great thunderstorms, which my sister and I watched from our bedrooms.  

The sodden fields unable to soak up the water passed it straight into the river carrying with it much debris.  At Chew Magna the reservoir overflowed further swelling the River Chew.  Like the first falling domino in a chain, at some stage that night the first of the debris-stricken bridges was washed away under this onslaught, sending a swirling torrent down to the next bridge, where the process was repeated and multiplied.  Eye witnesses described a 'wall of water' some 10 feet tall which reached this spot shortly before midnight.

That's the thing about history, mostly we just pass by without a clue as to what world shaping events have happened at that very spot.