Winter Floods 2013

Travelling to Chinon today we noted the rise in water level in some of the smaller streams and that the Veude had broken its banks at Champigny.

This, coupled with the amount of standing water in the fields, made us curious to see what the Vienne was like at Riviere....

Compare this with the same scene,  from a slightly different angle, back in August 2011...

As we left the river we noticed a pillar, carved with dates of previous "crue" or rise in water level...

As you will see from the position of the pillar (arrowed below) relative to the river, the floods today were nothing compared with the level the water reached back in 1923 and 1913..

Signs warning of floods had been placed on the route des pressoirs..

And in Chinon itself, the water level of the Vienne had been to the top of the stone pillars..

Not as bad as the devastating floods some areas of the UK have experienced recently, but certainly as bad as we've seen it.