The rain in Spain stays
mainly…….over my house
The English obsession with the weather is easy to indulge even here. Before I came I was assured there were only 7 days rain per year on average.
The man who let us into our first rented house when we arrived after the first drive from the UK was quite specific about how lucky we were to arrive in glorious winter sunshine. Last year it had rained for 5 weeks solid! Very unusual. It started on Dec. 17th.
A fortnight of ideal winter holiday weather later, it turned to torrential rain on the Friday night. The 17th Dec. On Saturday 18th we moved all our stuff to another house in the pouring rain – I’d got stock for 3 months with me and a ton of personal stuff to be going on with, we had our own computers and all (not laptops, mind) winter quilts – the lot. We got soaked. The new house had drive which went downhill and round a corner to the gates and the van wouldn’t fit under the lintel. There was a shelter with a cane roof, so the stock went in there with a tarpaulin slung under the roof to protect it. We went back to get soaked again fetching another load.
I’d reckoned without the force of a Spanish downpour. The tarpaulin had filled up and given way dumping gallons (or litres) of rainwater all over some of the books and needless to say it was the best box of all. Bugger.
When it hadn’t stopped after 4 days I was getting worried. But on the 5th it did desist. The pool looked like an infinity pool when it overspilled into the whole courtyard.
But that was nothing compared to the floods I nearly drove through in 2012 (another story), and indeed what happened a few weeks later.
My cortijo is part way up a hill bending away from the river going inland. Next door but one is next to the river alongside the track which turns to concrete just before my gates. I use the term advisedly, concrete here is full of ridges intended or not because someone always drives through it before it sets.
Anyway it was raining hard
all night, I can tell because the water pours off all flat roofs via
waterspouts often with gargoyle type heads. It cascades onto the floor to join
what is running down the drive. Which is fed by what is coming off the cliff at
the side (and this includes mud, tree, and cat), and goes under the gate to
join whatever is flowing down the hill. When I looked out the front, there was
no road but a muddy river of some depth which had deposited a massive clump of
bamboo, mud, roots and all, right outside my window, and left a boulder in the
middle of the river, sorry - road.
But I digress because I was
disturbed by a phone call. Which went like this. Hallo, this is Jude/ I’m
housesitting at Sally and David’s (the one next to the river). I don’t suppose
you’ve got a broom or a mop I could borrow?” “Hello, yeah I know, Um, yeah sure
but why?” “There’s a bit of water in the house……”. Yes, she’d slept through the
whole storm and woke to find the house a foot deep in muddy water being eyed
balefully from the top of the wardrobe by S & D’s cat who was NOT
IMPRESSED. We spent several hours sweeping the water outside and in the end we
just hosed it down to get rid of the mud. Everything inside the cupboards, the
sofa, the plug sockets, the fridge – a foot of muddy water. OMG. And I had thought a river rushing past my gate was a problem. Well
actually it was because when the water subsided enough to make it to my
neighbour's with the mop etc, the road dropped a ragged foot where the concrete
ended and the dirt track had washed away.
The whole river bed was devastated and all the tracks damaged, debris everywhere, and the tide mark on the outside wall of the flooded cortijo was a metre up the wall on the river bank side.
There must have been the equivalent of a tidal wave down the river valley which rose above the banks to cover the roads both sides and spread into the adjoining properties and orchards, not to mention what was hurtllng down every track and field to meet the river. Hooray for living on a hill, things go through but they do go past.
YouTube videos from
residents all over Nerja told of streets flooded and rivers running down roads.
There is little or no street drainage which doesn’t help, and what drains there
are had pushed their covers up into the roads. It took weeks before everything
was back to normal, and this was nothing compared to what I had seen in Murcia a few weeks back. The only safe place to be was Up
because all that water was headed Down and at times like these you are left
with no doubt where not to live, next to a river, at ground level, or down –
because what has been up will come down.
The rain in Spain stays mainly……well, a lot of it seems to stay near me now I think about it.