Friday 7th April - A stroll along River Wey (Wey Navigation) from Guildford town
centre, through Millmead, to St. Catherine’s Lock and as far as the road bridge
at Shalford. It was a very warm afternoon, with strong sunshine from a cloudless, anticyclonic sky. The willow trees along the river bank upstream of Millmead were coming into leaf. Everywhere, there was lots of greenery. This greenery was restful greenery, and much easier on my eyes than the glare off tarmac, concrete surfaces and buildings in this sort of weather. That said, the larger trees alongside the car park facing the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre and Debenhams were pollarded and now looked very bare. Marsh marigolds in water meadows beneath St. Catherine's Hill. Marsh marigolds flowering in the wooded meadow on the SE side of St. Catherine’s Hill. There wasn't, though, much shade in the open area between St. Catherine’s Hill and the railway bridge upstream, walking south past St. Catherine's Lock.
A narrowboat called Weyout moored in front of the old lock keeper's cottage just below the railway bridge.
Back at Mill Mead, sketched in the shade of the willows opposite the busy pub garden on the far side. Reflections in the river. I tried sketching them, though didn’t really have the right materials and I got lost in the detail. Nextdoor to the pub, on my left, a tarted up boathouse painted in white and turquoise green. Two blue canoes stood end on to one side, adding to the reflections.
Nextdoor to this, Guildford Boathouse was now seemingly closed; boarded up; and generally looking in a very sorry state. A tired Hoeseasons sign on the wall facing the canal. I don’t think I’ve been here for a couple of years and before then I hadn’t noticed. I don’t know, then, how long it’s been like this, the past couple of years, perhaps? At one time, you could do boat trips in narrowboats from here, as in summer 1982, with my cousin over here on holiday. Before then (1970s) I think there were some to Godalming as well (an early primary school assembly in which one of the other classes read out their story of the boat trip they'd taken to the rest of the school assembled in the hall “Steve opened a window, Shaun got wet…”. Much later on (early 1990s) I tried out the rowing boats with Guildford YHA Group, though I wasn’ t very good; or not according to the little boy in the boat with his parents, “ Dad’s better at this.”, or similar. Until now (past 2-3 years) all the rowing boats were moored just upstream of Millmead Lock. But none today. If it has all been allowed to fold, that’s a big shame. It was busy in the Millmead area this afternoon and in the warm sunshine they could have been popular. All the more at the weekend.
Before heading for the train, a cuppa on Debenhams terrace. A couple of mums on a nearby table mentioned the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre being flooded one year. This probably would have been September 1968, which (despite major flooding in 2000 and winter 2013/14) are probably still the worst floods in the southeast in living memory. I don't think the theatre flooded in winter 2013/14. In February 2014, I sat in Debenhams cafe looking out to a view of a flood, one of a succession that winter. See my blog notes from that period. Amid amid the prevailing weather now, all that seems a very long time ago. I thought the river now looked a bit low, certainly for this time of year.
My father, out painting at Waverley Abbey today (his peace disturbed at one point by a toy drone) begged to differ. He thought it looked fairly high. After a dry, warm week, I'd have thought that unlikely. I gather they adjust the water downstream of Godalming with sluice gates to keep the Wey and Godalming Navigations topped up, but it looked lower than normal where the Navigation and river ran as one channel (below Millmead Lock). I took some reference photos, including from Debenhams and the Danger sign on the bank just below the footbridge at the foot of the High Street. This sign partially submerged in February 2014.
The Environment Agency's webpage giving the river level at Guildford read 1.24m, Sunday April 9th, 3.39pm. The EA say this is in the normal range, though it is at the lower end of it (1.10m). Probably, as the French would say, estival, ie more like what would be expected during the summer.
This reflects the largely dried winter - one February's rainfall was up to the long term (1981-2010 UK and regional) average according to the Met.Office. At least in southern England, spring got going with avengence. Now the trees are coming into leaf, it's pretty safe to assume the recharge period for 2016/17 is over. A long hot summer ahead if the synoptic pattern stays anticyclonic.
Warm, dry weather like this in April is not unusual, (eg 2014, 2011 and 2003). The spring of 2014, though came after a much more reassuring recharge season than the one we've just had. That spring was tough on the Mole (next river eastwards), though that has a much more impermeable catchment, its flow dominated by surface run-off, as with the northern rivers and most of those in central and western France. The Wey's flow has a high proportion of its flow derived from rainwater which has percolated through the ground, ie baseflow. Normally at this time of year, that should be comfortably topped
up for the net evaporative season (April - October). Chalkstreams
such as the Itchen and Test are even more baseflow-dominated (upwards of 80%). Dry winters such as the one we've just had aren't so good here. Two or more successive dry winters are worrying. A lucky escape in 2012, when weather changed for the wetter in April.
I worry, though about a repeat of the largely dry period 1988-92. During this time period, there was intense rainfall and floods during winter 1989 /90 including
Burn's Day storm, January 25th 1990. That winter, too was followed by a warm, dry spring, then a hot dry summer. It was the successive dry winters in 1988/89, 1990/91 and 1991/92 that really took the toll on the Wey and the Wessex chalkstreams. People wondered if the
Lavant would ever flow again.
Given growing awareness (though disappointing
lack of action) of climate change at that time, I feared this regime becoming the new
norm. Since then, part or all of Britain
and western Europe have had a mix of very wet winters (eg 2000/01, 2013/14,
2015/16) and dry ones (1995/96, 1996/97, 2005/06, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2016/17).
However, my perception, certainly in southern Britain, has been of generally
early, warm, dry springs; later, warmer, drier autumns chopping the winter
recharge season from both ends. The rainfall patterns have seemingly reflected blocked
synoptic patterns. Prolonged spells of dry weather lasting months on end have been punctuated by a
bursts of full-on intense rainfall which invariably leads to flooding (recently and notoriously winter 2015/16 in northern Britain).
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Among the many varied, vibrant exhibits at this year’s
AppArt Exhibition and Sculpture Trail at Priors Field School near Godalming was
a handmade book by Alyke Thorpe about her Short
Wandering along the River Wey,
several decades of walking along the river with various generations of staffy
dogs. A recycled hardback book filled with her photographs of the river and dogs,
her embroidery, collage.
