Yesterday evening was one of those occasions when I wish I’d had a camera with me … getting home from work through a fairly big thunderstorm, by bike, was interesting. In the Chinese sense.
The storm had been building up since about 15:00, and by 17:00 was seriously coming down. I kind-of needed to get home, so just set off in the big waterproofs … The rain was starting to ease slightly as I started out, by what I hadn’t quite bargained for was the amount of flooding in the area. Most of the car park at work was under about 15cm of water when I left. People were wading out to their vehicles. Once I got out on to the main Woodstock Road, the traffic was jammed up completely – no problem to get through on the bike, though. My first turn into Bevington Road revealed that the dip in the road halfway along was under water (there was someone pushing a pram through it and water must have been nearly two feet deep!). So, I turn back and go up Woodstock Road again and then cut across to Banbury Road via Canterbury Road. Just as well, because Woodstock Road was almost six inches under by this point. Banbury Road was no different and parts of the road, especially the cycle/bus lane, were well over a foot deep. There were loads of people milling around on foot, many having decided simply to take off their shoes and socks and wade around barefoot. It gave the whole scenario a very strange atmosphere – this is the image I’d have liked to get on camera! Eventually, I biked tentatively up the pavement on the West side of Banbury Road, which was only a few inches under water rather than the road which was deeper. By the time I reached Summertown, things still weren’t much better and there were numerous fire engines and police cars ploughing through the water to get to whatever incidents had occurred. Coming out of Summertown to the North, I hoped things would improve – that’s uphill and less likely to be flooded, yes? True, except that the water was flowing fast downhill at a depth of a few inches …
Things improved after that and, by the time I actually reached home, it had completely stopped raining and our road looked almost dry. Almost as if what I’d been through hadn’t really happened.