The colder early mornings have been here for over a week now but today the rain came. Lots of it. It can get so heavy here the hill turns into a small river and the piping which the local council religiously clean twice a year but never unblock, spills over very quickly. At the bottom of the hill every downpour the drains in the road set to catch the water from the hill, spill over.
Ordinarily none of this would be cause for concern but lower down in the village they flood every year now and there are plans to build more houses on the hill, and more cement means more run off and less ground to soak up the rain; and all along the river drainage works on farmland to control marsh means the river has lost its natural places to flood, so it breaks its banks elsewhere.
Here if course this kind of human development is only of concern to insurance brokers and householders who lose carpets and a few possessions or have to break the walls in the gardens so the river floods the road not their homes. In other countries as we have seen, where populations fell trees on whole mountain sides and villages sit precariously even in the good weather, heavy rain kills.
Building is all about water-management.