Flooding

Returned to the chateau today to see how everything is. I knew there had been a lot of rain but I was not expecting the flooding that greeted me! It was crazy, the newly seeded park was extremely wet and the lake seemed to have extended halfway back towards the chateau. The woods were also flooded, looking more like some Florida swamps than a wood. After walking around the property to find out where all of this water was coming from I discovered that it is coming from some large fields on the other side of the Chauvigny road. There is a long ditch that takes all the water from these fields, passes it through a culvert under the road and into my woods! It would seem that it should then carry on through the woods in via another ditch and flow into the lake. From the lake it will then overflow into the ditch that runs from the lake to the chateau moat. It should then pass out of the moat and into another ditch which finally takes it to the road and community drainage on the over side of the chateau.

Clearly something is not working as it should. My best guess is that the ditch to the lake has become overgrown and full of soil so it allows the water to flood the woods. The lake probably also needs dredging out and I guess the same goes for the moat. So one of the jobs for this summer is to dig out and all of the ditches and the moat, widen and deepen the ditch from the moat to the road. This should achieve two things, allow the water to flow freely along the ditches and off the chateau land. It will also allow a much greater volume of rainwater to be contained and hopefully not flood onto the parkland!