Yesterday it rained hard with flash floods.

Just the day for work to organise a lunch time barbecue (bbq) for the engineering department. As one colleague put it, “it hasn’t rained so much at a bbq since Noah discovered that he had three pigs.”

I was giving one of my colleagues a lift to the bbq. The bbq was at a pub in the middle of rural Berkshire. It was like driving through a river, with several inches of fast flowing water on the major roads.
The minor roads (some single track) were hazardous with many deep puddles, like crossing fords.

Crossing one of these ‘puddles’ my car stalled, and we were left stranded in over 12 inches (30 cm) of water. The only thing that we could do was to get out of the car and wade to the ‘river bank’. It was still tipping it down with rain.

Here is the puddle after it stopped raining.
Doesn’t look that deep does it!

One of the strange things about rural Berkshire, being so close to major towns with hi-tech industries, is that mobile phone signal coverage is pants. Just when you need to make an emergency call you are in one of the few places were your phone won’t work.

To our rescue came some ladies from a near by day nursery (kindergarden). I never knew they were so strong. They helped push the car out of the water. Car still wouldn’t start.

It is at this point that my (nameless) colleague decided that he had had enough and hitched a lift home from a passing Land Rover, so I was left alone, no car, no phone, in the pouring rain.

I walked up to the day nursery and they kindly let me use their phone, gave me a cup of tea and a dry towel. I called the AA (car breakdown/recovery service). Understandably they were very busy with lots of people in trouble that day. They called me back and hour later saying that no local garages were willing to come out to help me. I was stranded.

During this time another vehicle had bumped into the back of my stationary car and left a dent:

I don’t think any of the people at the bbq had noticed that I had not arrived. My wife (who I had phoned earlier from the nursery) managed to get hold of one of them and they came to rescue me.

It took over two hours to get the 10 miles home since lots of roads were closed because they were impassable. I never had any lunch, but was home just in time for tea.

Today my wife and I set of to try and returned to the stranded car and get it sorted out. We tried several roads that were still flooded. In the end we had to go a long way around and approach it from a different direction. Once we had got to the car and checked that it still wouldn’t start, we then drove around until we found a spot that had a mobile phone signal and called the AA again.

It was another four hours until the AA arrived. The man examined the car. Water was in the air filter and thus in the pistons of the engine. Probably means a new engine. We were towed to a local garage. They don’t fix cars at weekends so we’ll have to wait until monday to find out how much it will be!

To see more pictures of yesterdays flooding in Berkshire, here are some links:

Flickr

BBC Berkshire