In Spate

new landscape at bottom of glen

It felt like it was raining all last Thursday night, and during that evening water breached the upper floor of Balintore Castle in about 5 locations. That's the problem with roof repairs they tend to be ongoing.  :-( The next morning as I looked down into Glen Quharity, I was delighted that the landscape had changed. The Quharity Burn is pretty small and not generally visible from the castle except as a line in the landscape. That morning there were multiple channels gushing with water, multiple ox-bow lakes and much washed up earth. Perhaps, I could put the leaks down to exceptional conditions rather than problems with the roof itself? Examining the wet areas of the castle with my builder, it seemed possible that much of the water ingress was simply huge volumes of water coming down the chimneys.

the path in front of the castle had turned into a river

I took Rascal, my builder's Jack Russell, for a walk to examine the damage. We went to the stone bridge at the bottom of the glen, where the Dairy Burn flows into the Quharity Burn. The Dairy Burn comes from the castle direction and was carrying a lot of mud: it seemed particularly swollen. After the two burns had joined, you could see the flows were still separate, the brown ribbon on the left hand side continued for some distance.

the Dairy Burn in spate

the Quharity Burn in spate

confluence of Dairy and Quarity Burns - double the spate!
note the flows remain separate for quite some distance