Ringwood`s River - the Avon in Flood

On Sunday the rain stopped. Just for a while.

I walked though a back lane from Ringwood`s old market place, to have a look at the floods on the edge of the town. A channel of the River Avon flows here, beside a small park. After the recent rains, the Avon has burst its banks and the channel and main river are flowing as one, across acres of drowned fields.

The wire fence in these photos shows the usual river bank and a field boundary.

The footbridge that normally leads to a footpath over fields, now stops at a meadow deep in water.

Water flowed angrily through deeper channels, but at the shallower edge, water weeds shone green.

The park showed signs of earlier flooding with puddles and slippery, muddy grass underfoot.

Beneath a stand of trees, purple crocuses survived the flood and opened their flowers to the pale sun.

This residential road was still flooded and closed, although several others are now useable again.

The Bickerley fields are usually a public area for walking and playing games. They were wet with standing water this weekend.

Natural pruning had stripped brittle twigs and branches in recent high winds.

The cottages of Bickerley Terrace are not far from the river, but seem to have escaped from the flood.

Across the fields, floodwater shone like a silver mirror, stretching away across farmland and down towards the distant sea.