Flooding in the Cotswolds
 

We are planning a trip to the Cotswolds (We will be based in Blockley.)in early October. In the light of all the flooding, is this a bad idea?

Possibly. Contact where you are staying and see what the situation is there.

Many bridges under 20 feet of water a week ago are practically normal today. In 10 weeks' time they'll be close to a drought.

Check back here in a week, but I've no plans to spend October anywhere other than, as always, commuting between London and the Cotswolds

By October we should all be back to normal. I wouldn't even start worrying about it now, and certainly not until you hear there's flooding in late September, which there probably won't be.

I doubt if homes or businesses will be back to normal by October

Most homes and businesses have been back to normal since the day after the heavy rain. Indeed, most homes and businesses were never anything but normal in the first place.

It's seriously bloody stupid to overdramatise this.

Yes, it's ghastly right now for people without water. But that'll be sorted out in the next few days. Some people were flooded out, and it was horrible for them. But for a huge proprtion of even those poor folk, it's now a matter of waiting for the loss adjusters and getting down to John Lewis to buy new carpets and curtains.

The whole affair was traumatic for many, and it'll take a while to forget. But most of the waters have receded, most roads are working normally and most pubs and hotels will, by October, just have a few better stories to tell and a few extraordinary photos to pass round.

Hi Flanneruk,

Will the areas hardest hit be back to normal by late September do you think? We were going to book a self-guided walking tour in the Cotswolds that begins and ends in Moreton-on-Marsh. Should we be selecting another area in the Cotswolds to be safe?

Thanks!

I doubt that people will be queuing up to stay there as the normal weather in the Cotswold is fairly miserable in October. Hold off booking till September when as others say, everything should be back to normal.

Actually - October weather in the Cotswolds can be quite nice.

I'd probably wait a couple of weeks and then check. Many places are already back to normal, but some places have did get quite a bit of damage. Since you are going to walk over a fair distance, you might need to tweek your specific route. Both julia_t and flanner would be great resources for "eyes on the ground" w/ local knowledge of things/places you might need to be concerned about.

The worst hit areas are around Tewkesbury, the north and west side of Gloucester, and Evesham in Worcestershire also suffered some severe flooding. These parts will have some extensive cleaning up to do which may take some time.

As flanner has said, there has been relatively little disruption around Moreton-in-Marsh and the northern part Cotswolds.

Other parts of Gloucestershire were totally unaffected by the flooding - until the water went off due to the treatment plant at Tewkesbury going under water due to the exceptionally high river levels. However once the treatment plant gets working again - within the next week or so, life will be back to normal in much of the county.

Without wanting to trivialise the ghastliness of life right now for people without water, we really are getting into the doolally over-reaction phase of all this.

Last night it was due to rain. The Gloucestershire Police Chief Constable told us all to stay indoors. It rained - oh, about as much as it usually does on a wet Saturday night (not a desperately rare event round here).

Outside the core no drinking water area, disruptions now mostly consist of a few roads with a bit of roadworks going on, and the absence of through trains from the Northern Cotswolds to London (an absence Worst Great Western manages to achieve most of the year without any help from wet weather).

At Longborough Festival Opera last night, in the middle of Gloucestershire, when the local police would have preferred us all to be watching Big Brother at home, several hundred of us put on our DJs and ball frocks, parked on the grass, picknicked, watched a stunning performance of Cosi Fan Tutte and drove home through a spot of drizzle no doubt some sily-season headline writer's already describing as "More Rain Misery for Flood Victims"

People round here aren't not victims, and don't do misery (though I'd have a great deal of sympathy with Julia if she did). It's now a splendidly sunny Sunday and we're off to walk pretty much the paths Katherine's worried about walking in the autumn.

Incidentally, kaneda, there's no such thing as miserable weather. Just people who allow a few drops of rain to determine their emotions.

"Incidentally, kaneda, there's no such thing as miserable weather. Just people who allow a few drops of rain to determine their emotions."

Nicely said flanneruk. :-)

The cotswolds are generally hilly. The floods are around rivers on flood plains (we are talking small areas here no matter how the photos look). October is in what we are begining to call the "dry season" or Autumn. Everything will be back undercontrol and businesses will love to see you

This flood problem you see is tiny thing made so newsworthy because wth weather is the core to our conversations in the UK so we just have to flush (pun) the issue to everyone.

Here we are looking forward to being able to just 'flush'!

The water is now supposedly being reconnected, but as we are pretty much furthest from the supply (our water comes from Birdlip) it will probably be the end of the week before we have it coming from our taps.

From the website:
Severn Trent said the newly restored water must not be used for drinking (even after boiling), preparing food, making ice or brushing teeth.

Until further notice the tap water can only be used for purposes such as bathing, showering and flushing toilets, the firm added.

Now engineers have restarted the works - which serve about 130,000 homes - the company plans to restore supplies, area by area, over the next week.

They will release details of areas that are due to be reconnected each day, said a statement.

Director of water services Andy Smith described the weekend's progress as "significant".

But he added: "This does not mean that customers will have water at their taps immediately. Wider areas of Tewkesbury will begin to get water over the next 24 hours, but for the majority of homes in Gloucester and Cheltenham, reconnection is still several days away."

He said 1,200 miles of water pipes still needed to be re-filled and extra inspectors were out checking supplies and pipes, but he urged people to watch out for bogus callers posing as water officials.

While the situation is inconvenient to say the least, I am just thankful that we do not have to cope with the loss of precious possessions and several inches of sludge everywhere. The Army are supplying us with bottled water and as much as we want to refill bottles and buckets.

I live 600 feet above sea level, and as bilboburglar says, the Cotswolds is a hilly part of the country. Also we have electricity so I don't feel we are suffering at all. As one of my teenagers said, it is character building, and they have learnt rapidly what a precious commodity fresh water is, and to be grateful for its ready availability.

I'm glad things are getting back to normal & can only imagine how bad it is for those whose homes are flooded but on a previous thread we were chided for not reacting enough to reports of the flooding & now we're all overreacting. :)

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35037664

There is a difference between feeling for people who are currently going through distress and worrying about how it will affect you as a tourist in three months time.

Sorry Rosscat - that was not meaning you shouldn't ask your question. :)

No offense taken Sarvowinner. I live in an area that has had two tornados and an ice storm in the last year. I know what it is like to lose the utilities you have come to take for granted. And I work for a municipal utility company, so during those times I took a lot of calls and saw neighborhoods wiped away and folks who lost everything. I'm just coming at this from a perspective of a traveler who has invested a lot of time and money in this venture. And I want to to make the best choices for my investment and my friends. I know the area will recover and it will not be immediate. I just want to know what we will be dealing with when we get there.