When rivers fight back

On the way back from our walk at Hankley this morning, we were stopped by the sight of the river flooding. We weren’t alone; there were quite a few of us stopping and staring.

Normally, the bridge in the photo below leads to a road which, not only goes off to the left but also up the hill, where the police cars are parked. Quite extraordinary.

I thought that, perhaps, the people on the bridge had been caught there, cut off on both sides. I could imagine the people on the other side of the river throwing them food and drink…mainly because that’s where the village shop is.

It wasn’t blocking our way. This is one corner of the triangle that is the village green at Tilford. And here’s a couple of benches where people generally sit and watch the cricket…in the summer.

Hankley, itself, looked lovely in what was a very sunny day, and we had a lovely walk. Whenever we walk around Hankley, Mirinda always states that whenever she suggests moving away, I should remind her of how wonderful Hankley is. I do.

Back at home, we had a late lunch then took off for Guildford for the 3:10 session of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. That’s why we watched the first part the other day…just to remind us of what went before.

While we left rather early for Guildford, it was fortunate we did. As we pulled into the usual car park next to the cinema we noticed the electronic sign, which shows how many car spaces there are left, was showing there was only two vacant ones. And there were two cars in front of us.

The car park is quite big so this was a bit of a surprise. Well, it was until we drove by. The entire bottom level of the car park was under about five feet of water. This reduced the car park by at least 200 spaces. We joined the queue leaving the centre of Guildford.

We headed out to the Park and Ride at the Spectrum (something we should have done in the first place), parked safely on the hill then caught the pink bus back into town. We just made the movie…with time to buy popcorn and ice cream, of course.

There were signs everywhere saying how some parts of the cinema had flooded and the carpet may still be damp in places. The cinema in Guildford is right next to the River Wey navigation and the water level was very high. Apparently, it burst its banks over Christmas and that’s, basically, what filled the car park with water.

Anyway, we were safe, warm and dry as we sat and watched The Hobbit. I enjoyed it because Legolas is in it; Mirinda wasn’t too sure as there is a lot of stuff that isn’t in the book. Mind you, she did insist that we’d need to buy the extended version next November.