Floods.
Torrential floods in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and a mad dash to my Grandpa's birthday. July 2007.

Yesterday was my Grandfather: Jozef Bartosik's, 90th birthday. I'm living in Frankfurt for work this summer, and I'd arranged to fly back especially to see him. I figured that he'll only have one 90th birthday, and with the death of his wife some months before, and my cousin Tom organising a family party in the nearby town, I was determined to make it.

My troubles started in Frankfurt airport on Friday; I arrived for my 20:30 flight and had been extra organised and checked in online and only had hand baggage. After going through security I found that my flight was not showing a gate, and it was the only one not showing a gate, not a good sign. My flight was cancelled along with all 3 British Airways flights that afternoon, due to the torrential rain in England. That afternoon on the phone, a mate from work Gary had told me that Teddington was completely under water, and he'd never seen anything like it. Clearly the rain was bad, I'd never heard of rain stopping flights, especially in England.

After running around the airport and going through security 4 times, I finally was re-booked on a 21:30hrs Lufthansa flight to London. After yet more and more delay I finally arrived in London just before midnight.

The following morning, my mother and I set off in plenty of time toward my Grandfather's house near Stow, Gloucestershire.

We left ourselves hours to make the journey up there, and had anticipated problems from yesterday's rain; the bad news was that more rain was imminent, and the rivers were already close to breaking their banks, with Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire being some of the worst affected area's.

Mum and I managed to get through Oxford despite heavy traffic, and were nearly scuppered at the town of Burford in Oxfordshire. The road into the high st was closed, and we were about to divert when the policeman moved the bollards, and allowed us down into the town, towards the ancient single file bridge at the bottom of the town. (the above pictures were taken here) I took a roll of Fuji Relia film, and will have to wait until I can develop and scan those pictures next month.

After my mother had pulled over for my to photograph the flooding, we discovered the full extent of the problems. We knew that the hotel where Tom had arranged the Tea and party, had been totally flooded. Some of my other cousins cancelled unable to travel up, and it became clear that the floods were causing havoc, and we'd been lucky to get through Burford onto higher ground and towards Stow.

We made it to my Grandpa's house and I'm pleased we did, because in the end we were the only ones. I have some photo's of my Grandpa, but again, they're on my roll of film.

Tom and his wife got stuck at the town of Witney (left and above), and had to turn back, we'd find out about Witney's problems a couple of hours later. We said goodbye to my Grandpa and started off towards Oxford. Clearly the situation had worsened significantly.

We reached a traffic jam just outside Oxford and we saw lots of fire engines pass us, including a bizarre looking response vehicle; at which point we agreed that any road requiring one of those, was not a road that we wanted to be on. Mum and I decided to wing it on the back roads, after it was discovered that the only map in the car was a surrey street atlas. We laughed and laughed, and went round in circles, ending up in the same queue.

Mum started to worry about what provisions we had onboard, and clearly the half packet of brazil nuts and some acid drops were not going to see us through a night in the car; we had to make it home! We found a proper map wedged under some junk in the the boot. We found Witney, completely flooded and nothing was going to get through, note the dog being rescued above.

Eventually we were directed to drive at 1mph over a pipe by the fire brigade, near Kingston Bagpuize and Abingdon; the rain was torrential. We drove via Didcot and Newbury to the M5, reaching home nearly 4 hours after we'd left, via probably the only road still open heading south out of Oxfordshire.

Please note that this page is not finished and I am waiting for a roll of film to be developed; the page should be updated in late August.


Click for: BBC news article on the floods.
One of my photo's even made the BBC website: click here, then press 2.



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Authors: Photographs created by: James Bartosik.
Date of event: Saturday, July 21st 2007.
Page History: First created: July 22nd 2007. Last Revision: July 23rd. Revision version: 1.1.
Camera and Lenses: Canon 350D, EF 24-70mm L USM, F2.8.
Locations: Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, England.
Copyright: © Copyright material, all rights reserved.