English Weather

What is it about the English and their weather! Always the backstop of 'what shall I talk about' or the first thing you say to someone you've just met, it is the most popular topic of conversation in Britain.

And so it was one Saturday afternoon as Himself and I drove from Cornwall to Somerset to view the pub with the best potential so far. It was raining. Not your ordinary rain but a veritable torrent or as my granddad used to say 'the sky was flooding.' Himself favoured the expression 'one months rain in a day' but after a bit of discussion we agreed it was probably a monsoon.

Known originally as the land of the summer people because the area was too wet to live in during winter, Somerset is a beautiful county. It has something for everyone. Large historic country houses and castles, museums, small and quirky like the Bakelite museum, or large as in the Fleet Air Arm museum. It's moors, wetlands and marshes are home to a range of rare and varied birds an wildlife. Today basket weaving and hurdle making sits comfortably alongside Eco-friendly willow coffin makers and the ever present farmhouse scrumpy ciders.

The pub we were to view was in an area of Somerset called 'The Levels', an area of wetlands controlled from flooding with a series of sea defences. On arrival the location of the pub was good, and from the road the building itself looked very good. Unfortunately, the sea defences did not appear to be working well in this area, or may be it was the heavy clay soil found on the levels that caused todays problem. The pub was set in grounds lower than the road and surrounded by water as it was we would have no option but to leave the car and wade.