Kearsney Abbey after the rain..

The weather has been hitting the headlines for months, rain, rain and more rain! There are many people who have had their homes invaded by water, my heart goes out to them all, it will be many months until their lives get back to anywhere normal.

Here in South East Kent we have been very lucky, we have had the rain and there are fields that have turned into lakes, but in our immediate area there are no flooded houses that I know of. The golf course to the North of the town has been flooded and there has been a lot of water in Kearsney Abbey.

The water leaving the lakes in Kearsney Abbey to flow down to the sea.

The young swans..

…and the geese were quite happy!

I had a few days off work this week, on Tuesday the sun was shining so I decided to pay a visit to Kearsney Abbey just to see how badly affected it was by the water.

I stayed on the Abbey side to start off with, the lakes had overflowed their very small edge walls, but this has happened before and minimal damage has been done. The geese and swans were unperturbed by the extra water, and seem to be spending a lot of time preening themselves.

Crossing the road to the Russell Garden site there was a different story, the river was running very quickly, and instead of the water running through the centre parts of the bridges it was wooshing around each end of the bridges too. 

The water rushing round the end of the bridge, as well as through the middle archway.

The bridges were out of bounds because of the water – you can see the small wall which usually marks the edge of the water is totally submerged.

Walking to the end of the gardens on the ‘top’ path you reach the part of the gardens known as ‘Bushey Ruff’ which includes a beautiful lake. I didn’t have wellingtons on, so I couldn’t get right up to the lake as there was water everywhere. I did try to get close but just ended up with wet boots, socks, feet and soggy jeans!!

The closest I could get to the Bushey Ruff part of the site, this is usually a path leading up to a grassy area in front of the lake..

I enjoyed my walk, especially getting close to the swans and I hope the weather will improve all over the country, until then keep safe and dry everyone