Swimming to Banbury

The last time I spent seven hours in a car travelling home from Birmingham it was due to wind. This time, it was rain.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, July has been a bit of a disappointment here in Britain. While last summer ushered in relentless sun, unprecedented 80-degree heat waves, water restrictions and an upsurge in doom-and-gloom predictions, this summer (which is more like an endless and unusually wet March) has brought with it relentless rain, unprecedented flooding and an upsurge in doom-and-gloom predictions. The only silver lining is, we haven't been subject to water rationing yet.

This alerts us to two important truths: no mater what the weather, the British will complain about it; and travel in Britain, unless it is 60 degrees (15C), partly sunny with a light breeze, is going to be an ordeal.

During this particular day, the rain had been spectacularly copious, enthusiastic and tenacious. By the time we left, however, the downpour had dulled to a steady drizzle, so we harbored hopes of making it home by dinnertime.

We crawled out of the city and onto the motorway. After an hour, we had gone only one exit and made the decision to try our luck on the secondary roads, which were at least moving. In retrospect, this turned out to be a good idea; if we had crept past that exit, we would have ended up sitting stock still on the motorway for, well, I can't really say, as this morning I am listening to news reports that some people are still there.

Having narrowly avoided being helplessly trapped on the motorway, we found ourselves hopelessly trapped on a network of unfamiliar country roads. Phone calls to loved ones and constant monitoring of the traffic line assured us that, if we could escape the midlands and make it as far south as Banbury, we might actually be home before morning. Problem was, every road was under water. We would drive along, our hopes soaring as we reached speeds of up to forty miles an hour, only to come up against a solid block of cars and the unwelcome sight of tarmac disappearing beneath murky water, leaving us no choice but to turn around and try our luck elsewhere.

This strategy eventually found us traversing roads no wider than a garden path in an area where meaningful signs were few and correlations with our map non-existent. In addition to seeing some fabulous scenery, we ended up driving in circles and occasionally up farm tracks. At the end of another hour, we were no closer to our objective.

Now, you might think this would sour me on England, but in fact, it endears the place to me even more. This wasn't an exercise in futility so much as it was a challenge, a battle between man and nature, pitting wit and a Vauxhall Estate Car against the rising flood water. And we weren't the only ones playing. As we meandered our way from Warwick to Southam to Daventry, making U-turns at washed out roads and at the end of lanes that turned out to be driveways, we began to recognize other cars bearing bewildered yet determined drivers who grimly inched by us toward the farmstead we had just turned around at, or had pulled to the side of the road to consult maps and plan their next angle of attack. I felt a kinship with these people; we were a brotherhood, a happy few not content to sit on the motorway accepting our fate. We would not go quietly into that good night but rage, rage against the rising of the water.

True, we weren't getting anywhere, but at least we were moving.

Eventually there came that giddy moment when we found ourselves on a road that would lead us into Banbury. The way seemed clear and, as we were actually heading south, we felt we had left the worst of it behind us. Naturally, we came to yet another traffic jam.

By now, upon seeing backed-up traffic, people were immediately turning around, like rats trapped in an endless maze. But we knew we had checked every other possible route and, if we couldn't get through here, we would be spending the night. So we pressed onward and chatted with a few people at the water's edge. They were of the same mind we were; this was our last chance. So we dove in.

We weren't actually crossing a river, mind you, just passing by a largish field that had filled up with water and was passing it to another largish, but slightly lower, field on the other side of the road. The result was a huge swath of road covered in up to two feet of muddy, rushing water. Fortunately, we were in a formidable vehicle; my little Daewoo would have been swept away.

I put my window down so I could snap some photos, but when water started splashing over the gunwales I was forced to batten down the hatches. The water stretched on a lot further than we thought it would but, luckily for us, the land rose instead of dipping and we made it safely to the far shore.
 

Really, what caption can I add to this?

From there we achieved Banbury and the M40, which was, as promised, free from flooding and massive traffic jams. It was now eight thirty; we still had two hours to go and had driven a total of 41 miles in five hours. We were tired, hungry and mentally exhausted.

But we weren't beaten.