One eye witness was Bob Harvey who was returning home to Bourne from Grantham. "I made it with some difficulty", he said. "Torrential rain over the top of the Wolds had caused flash flooding of roads around Folkingham so we retreated and tried to come back via the villages of Lenton and Bulby. Roads there were also impassable with water running along the road at Bulby as though it was a river. Got to Kirkby Underwood, and the roads were dry. From there to Bourne you'd know nothing of what was happening a few miles north."

There was a similar tale from Peter Sharpe, of Hereward Street, Bourne. "I was caught out too", he said. "Coming into Folkingham from the north. I braved it through the first torrent that was running across the road but decided against the second one when a car cut out in it and became stuck. I then drove through several other floods in an attempt to get through via Ingoldsby village but then suddenly, with about a hundred yards of flooded road in front of me, I turned round and went back. I eventually went all the way round to the A1, not wanting to gamble on the roads being blocked at either Corby Glen, Grimsthorpe or Edenham. Near Kirton, I had driven through a stretch of only a few hundred yards, where it was like driving underneath a waterfall, with visibility almost down to zero. Lakes seem to have appeared in fields within a matter of minutes."

Bourne town councillor Brenda Johnson was also returning from Grantham when the storm broke. "When I came through Folkingham residents were just getting a dinghy out", she said. "I was lucky and managed to get through but was then faced with at least two more floods to go through. As I was driving a people carrier, I thought I may get through OK but struggled. However, at Edenham, they had managed to start harvesting and there was no sign of rain there."

Roger Callow, who lives at Aslackby, near Bourne, was also concerned about the capability of the fen drains to cope with such extreme weather conditions. "Our place is right next to Pointon Lode which separates Pointon and Aslackby Fens and in the five years we have lived here I have never seen it rise so fast and reach the level that it did this afternoon. What is most worrying is that we have a section of the bank that has progressively dropped over the last few years through erosion and soil movement and today's water level came to within a foot of the top of this unstable section of bank. Come on Environment Agency, I've been telling you about this for three years now!"

He added: "I felt sorry for the parent moorhen which was having a hell of a time keeping two young chicks from getting swept downstream into the Forty Foot Drain."

Photo courtesy Roger Callow