Anyway, here’s a 360 panorama that I created using a great photo stitching and panorama hosting service called Clevr.

This was taken on my phone, a Nokia N93, as I was standing on a wall on the side of The A4104 between Holly Green (where I live) and Upton (where I work).

Original photo found on the BBC website.

Update: Thanks to Oli at ic360 for sending me this picture which I’ve since doctored.

Anyway, here’s some photos plus more on my facebook

Above: the car parked closest is outside our house

At around 9pm Saturday evening standing at the end of our little layby on the A4104 looking over the fields into Upton and over to Malvern the scene was pretty remarkable with there being water as far as one could see.

It was clear on Friday that it was going to flood. After only 1 year living here and seeing 4 (now 5) floods the sheer amount of rain that fell during the day made it a no brainer. That coupled with the reports of flash floods everywhere (of which we had a few on the main roads) we were sure that by Saturday a lot of that water would filter down to the Severn and we’d be screwed.

Sure enough this morning around 8am I walked into work and yep, Upton was flooded. Not much worse than the other times we’ve seen but because the defences got stuck in the truck on the M50 they were not there to help; so all the boozers and houses on the waterfront were underwater, it was a pitiful sight. Made worse by the pretty bunting and marquees everywhere ready for the Upton Blues Festival which was due to happen this weekend.

Access to the office was fine and I spoke with my landlord who also runs the map shop (great URL!) and he reckoned that the worst it has ever been was the ‘big floods of 1947′ where the water came half way up the lane that our building is on. Heartened by this I got on with a full days work.

Later heading home I was struck by just how much the river was pouring into the field next to the bridge over the considerably higher secondary bank; this changed things dramatically. Within 3-4 hours the A4104 was impassible and all of the fields were lakes with a swift current through the middle. At 8pm I went down to the corner to see why the cars were all stopped outside our house and a last few 4×4’s were getting though what looked like 1/2 a meter of water before the road was closed and the police made everyone turn around.

By 10pm I went back down and it was now right to the bend in the road and quite evidently over waist height. As I was there a huge tractor with massive wheels waded through and it was entering his cab. I’d class that as a closed road.

My hope is that even though it’ll likely rise more tonight, the road does start to rise pretty quickly and then we’re further set back from the road on a second slope. Being paranoid I’ve parked my car a few hundred meters further up the hill where it levels out; if it gets that far then most of this side of the country will be under water and having a wet car will be the least of my concerns.

So with nothing more than a flooded cellar and an inability to get to work - though the VPN is currently still up so I pulled all the stuff I’m likely to need for the next week - I’d say we’ve personally got off very lightly, so far. I can only imagine how bad it is in Upton and of course all over the area at the moment. I know for a fact that poor Iain had to abandon his car on the way home Friday night and has no idea how much water it is currently under!

Who’d have thought it, lots of heavy rain and then the next few days the River bursts its banks, amazing. Yes for the third time this year it’s flood time here in not-so-sunny Upton.

Thankfully there are some excellent flood defences in place so the town is still usable (unlike the main road to Malvern) and I’m able to write this at work.

Looks like it’s a lot worse elsewhere in the area with one guy dying this morning in Pershore when he tried to cross a ford in his car.

More photos on my Facebook also on the BBC site.

The bash at ours loosely based around the Upton Jazz festival was a cracking success with the red wine flowing, the parents getting a rest, the meat burning production line not missing a beat and everyone getting along famously.

The final tally was 16 people staying at our house over the weekend not including family Beale plus a further 5 day visitors on the Saturday.

People started arriving Friday night, the majority coming from London and getting there around 10:30PM; we stayed up drinking and chatting until around 2AM. On Saturday I cooked a massive breakfast of 40 rashers of bacon, 20 sausages, 4 tins beans, 3 tins toms and pan full of scrambled egg. We then hung out for a while until heading into ‘town’ around lunchtime.

Not one of us actually went into the festival itself but we did have a few beers in the pubs and mill around for a while. When we (families Ozficici and Beale) started getting hungry it was back to ours (after popping into the local butcher for lots more meat) where the BBQ got lit up. The rest started drifting back from town over the next 2 hours and by 6pm we were all well on our way to getting very merry.

With regular top-ups of charcoal the BBQ kept going all evening which really sorted out the only real logistical nightmare: whilst I didn’t want to be worrying about people going hungry I also didn’t want to be doing all the cooking. So with the BBQ going all afternoon and evening people just sorted themselves out.

Whilst it did rain on and off, much like Le Mans, it wasn’t too much of a bother as it stopped almost as soon as it started each time and there was never a point where we all had to move inside. As the last of hardcore of four (Gen, Phil, Kurt and myself) I got into bed around 1AM.

On Sunday we had a 4 hour toast and tea fest with everyone taking it very easy and then preparing for their journeys home. With just a few of us left it was BBQ on again and a slap up lunch of unused meat and salad just in case we’d forgotten what read meat tasted like!

Thanks to everyone that came, for being there and all supplying (copious) amounts of meat and wine. Special thanks to Kurt for starting off and then regularly tending the BBQ both days.

See you next year!

P.S. There’s a bunch of photos on facebook.

If I already know you and you’re going to be in the area for the festival then please feel free to swing by and I’ll buy you a beer.

It would be an understatement to say that I didn’t rate the experience: it was overpriced - but I was expecting that - the main issue was that it was also not good value. For example a restaurant meal for 2 adults and 2 small children was easily going to cost £50 (and much more without trying hard). I appreciate that’s not too expensive in the scheme of things but when the quality was ‘chainy’ at best - think poor Beefeater - then it starts to grate pretty quickly. So the next option is to think of utilising the kitchen and go self catering, but the markup on the internal supermarket was easily 40% over normal prices. So on the second day I went into the nearby town and went large on everything, posh bacon, cheese, wine etc and we cooked for ourselves for the rest of the holiday and still ’saved’ a packet.
My expectation of the holiday was that it would be luxury in idyllic surroundings with loads of activities laid on. Well the accommodation was good (but it should be for getting on for £100 a day) but except for the, admittedly great, swimming pool and the one playground everything was extra; *loads* extra. Now I don’t mind spending a few quid but when I start feeling that I’m getting ripped off, I close my wallet pretty quickly.

Another thing that I didn’t like was the fact that there was *no* promotion of the local area. We were in the Lake District FFS! You’d think it was just some big ponds and some little hills nearby. The best two days of the holiday where when we escaped the dome (Logans run?) and sampled the local scenery. Only 20 miles away was Derwent Water and breathtakingly beautiful it was too.

What has confused us the most (and is mainly the driver for writing this) is that a considerable proportion of the people that we know and rate in this world all love Center Parcs and swear they’ll go again; we’re both thinking that actually it’s us that’s weird!

The only thing we can think of is that if we still lived in East London (or any other bit of a city) then the escape itself would have been a great tonic. In reality what we got was a very expensive swimming pool in surroundings that we could replicate by either going out into the back garden (e.g. pheasants, bunnies, trees) or by driving west 10 miles into Herefordshire and eating some nice sarnies and drinking a flask of tea.

I guess the caravanning lark will suit us down to the ground then.

Edit

In a fit of dual blogging - we were were in different parts of the house and unaware of what the other was doing - The Mrs posted something up about the holiday at the same  time as I was writing mine. As expected hers is is slightly more eloquent.

Acording to the BBC local weather page for my area it’s going to continue to be hot for the coming week:

Heatwave conditions with very hot sunshine and light east windflow. Very high temperatures expected for all. Warm muggy nights. Hazy early each morning-tide.
Humidity low at first then rising later.
Maximum temperature 31-32c 88-90f but up to 34-35c in places.
Minimum temperature 15-17c 59-63f.

This is also a good excuse to post some pics of our new house, taken today:

I’ll finish work in a minute and go mow the grass (again!).

My summary of the past week is as follows:

• Living out of boxes really sucks
• The kids are pretty hyper. They’ve spent the past 3 years in nursery most of the time and now they have to hang out with their parents all day, every day, it must be weird for them
• We’ve a much bigger garden; mowing the lawn takes a long time and you HAVE to do it else it gets longer and then it takes even longer but is also much harder work
• I’ve been to the post office in the villiage* 3 times and have not had to queue yet
• Cathie got an appt to see doctor the same day and wasn’t kept waiting for ages
• We messed up on the dates and turned up at the dentisit for check-up/registration a day early. “Never mind” and they saw us there and then rather than us having to come back
• Everyone drives s l o o o o w l y
• I have wild rabbits in my garden (hmmmm pie) and I saw a grass snake just now
• Got got an accountant for Siftware, got Exchange working and have all my gear fully plugged-in. Main jobs now are to finish off the company set-up and get the website finished. At which point I’ll start trying properly to get some contract work

*Actually Upton-upon-Severn is a town but it seems far too tiny to be anything other than a villiage.