Tuesday 14 August 2018

The Drought



In the UK we have had very little rain for most of the summer from June to August this has resulted in a hosepipe ban in parts of the UK. So far this has not affected us where we live and over the last few days we have had a bit of rain. So I was interested to see how the Elan Reservoir was holding up being as it supplied Birmingham. I had seen a few photos but wanted to see myself and over the weekend I went there while we were in Wales. Before you look at the photos I suggest you look at my Blog on the Elan Valley for some background on it or just go through the photos. and it will show you the places I visited in this blog




This is the Caban Coch Dam



The outflow you can see below




This is what forms the River Elan that eventually flows into the River Wye
Below it is the old turbine buildings and visitor centre



Next along is when you would think is a bridge but below it is a dam, you can see it in a photon in the blog I linked. The water is low




Showing the banks of the reservoir




Makes me wonder how much lower it can go







The Foel tower the pick up point for the water going to Birmingham





The next Dam is reached by going over a bridge first, looking over I was surprised at what I saw below




Looking towards the dam you could see how the water had cut through the rock over the years
Thousands of years of the water running has done this and its not something you see often here
Look up and you can see the dam in the distance





The water behind it was very low



The whole bank was on show




Looking towards  Point Elan





Looking down from the dam you see the where the river has cut through the rock
Looking further along you see an island has begun to get bigger, the first time I saw this it looked like a clump of trees in the middle of a mass of water now it looks like you could almost walk to it from one side. I went away felling quite shocked at what I had seen and often  wonder what this place would have looked like before the flooded the valleys
Taking Part in Our World Turesday


12 comments:

  1. Great photos and documentation of the dry summer there.

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  2. It's amazing how low that water is. You reminded me of a trip I took to northern California during a bad drought some 25 to 30 years ago. I was shocked to see how low water was in some of the lakes.

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    Replies
    1. We had a bad one back in 1976 but I never knew of the dams then

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  3. Even with the low water, there's still some beautiful things to see. Nature always amazes me with the rock formations.

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  4. That is quite low, glad you took photos of it. Be interesting to compare with another time period.

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  5. After such a wet winter and spring I am surprised by the lack of water. Maybe we need to look at storing water underground so we don't lose so much through evaporation.

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