What a strange month we’re leaving behind
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a Strange and Sad Week. Today I close the month with a diversion from my usual topics. News that sums up a strange, and for many, very sad, month. News from where we live. News that showed us again how life can turn on a penny, suddenly and tragically.
We live in a beautiful place and know how fortunate we are. We’ve worked hard over the years to be here now, but still, we consider ourselves lucky. Southwest France is a place many people visit for all kinds of reasons, including its landscape, pretty villages and good weather. Each summer I enjoy sharing the fields of stunning sunflowers on social media. If I do that this year it’ll be tinged with sadness as they’ll be survivors and reminders of a terrible night for our local area.
On Monday evening Michel and I sat outside watching storm clouds building in the distance. Temperatures over the weekend had hit record highs and a storm felt inevitable to break the heat. Summer thunderstorms are not unusual here and every year we experience several. As the lightning came closer I headed to bed with the dogs, aiming to settle Cerise as best I could. We left Michel outside.
Our bedroom is in the oldest part of the house, secluded down a corridor away from the open plan main building. Usually it’s quiet when the windows, door and shutters are closed. But within five minutes of climbing into bed noises which weren’t thunder began. It sounded like great buckets of water filled with metal golfballs being thrown against glass. The electricity cut out, I went to investigate calling to Michel and had to shout above the noise as I realised we were in the middle of a fierce hailstorm which was battering the house.
The noise was way higher than anything I’d experienced with a storm. The house is old with solid, thick stone walls, terracotta roof tiles, double glazed windows and doors and wooden shutters. But still the noise was terrifying.
And as suddenly as it started, it ended. Fifteeen minutes of hail storming across our beautiful region. We huddled in bed and waited until dawn to see the damage.
We got off lightly. Others did not. Our car and campervan have smashed lights and roof and much bodywork damage. Inconvenient, not devastating. Farmers have had fields stripped of crops. Not flattened, stripped. Trees are leafless as the hailstones ripped through foliage. Walnut trees look bare, dormant, like they do in mid-winter. The region’s valuable annual walnut crop wiped out in minutes.
The hailstones were larger than golfballs, frozen balls of ice flung down with the full force of nature we ignore at our peril. Agriculture is an important part of the economy of our region. But aside from the financial costs of this damaage, the emotional toll on those affected is immeasurable and cannot be compensated for.
The damage to many properties is severe. A short drive into town yesterday showed tarpaulins covering hundreds of roofs. The tiled roofs hammered by hail stones, smashed into nothing in just fifteen terrible minutes on Monday night. People now face months, perhaps years, of major problems.
With all this, we did have a lovely couple of days however this week. Friends on their way down to us spent Monday night a couple of hours north before continuing on. Thank goodness they did as their motorhome would not have fared well. See my next blog in a few days for much happier news on our time spent together.
