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Northern Ireland Flooding

GoldenEraGuitarsGoldenEraGuitars Frets: 8825
edited August 2017 in Off Topic tFB Trader
I know that if you're anywhere else in the mainland UK you probably won't get Northern Ireland's news. But this is different.

Last night, we travelled 40 miles north west to Derry for a gig. The weather was awful and even on the drive up (you climb into the mountains 10 miles from our house en route to Derry) we were driving through standing water and flowing water. The Glenshane pass links where our house is to Derry, its an A road but it's windy with dramatic scenery and epic valleys.

But, after leaving the gig the rain had stopped. It seemed calm although there was flooding in Derry itself. We got out the city about a mile and all of a sudden the sat nav wanted to take us off the Glenshane. We were in a long line of traffic with the feeder lane to the right void of traffic. I took the plunge and followed the sat nav. As I turned round the to the right we were confronted with water making its way uphill. A quick 180 was done and we rejoined the queue on the Glenshane. As we proceeded down the road we saw the problem. The river Faughan had burst its bank at Drumahoe (the river Faughan crosses under the Glenshane here) and the water had swollen over 10' thus covering the road. We crossed our fingers and went through behind a van.... fuck me it was high.. and fast. But we got through, celebrated and made our way down home. The sky was lighting up every 20 seconds, it was truly epic. As we got a few miles out we hit another queue. This one was huge though. We sat for 45 mins before word spread that the water was 8' high in a dip in the road. The Glenshane was cut off, so were we.

After much deliberation we did a U turn and realised that by the time we gave in and conceded defeat we were one of the last cars still there. We made our back to Derry after reading that a rescue shelter had been set up at the Foyle Arena. As we approached Drumahoe again my heart started racing. The water that had been flowing across the road before was now a raging torrent. Either side the park and ride and sports fields were flooded and the river was cascading across the Glenshane. You can get a true sense of the power, height of the water or emotions in the car but I actually thought "Scott, what have you done?!"



We were trying to stay calm as we crossed. One of our back seat passengers was really freaking out. We managed to get across but I don't know how. I thought he car was knackered as I couldn't change gear. I realised that my left leg was numb with shock and I wasn't pushing the clutch in hard enough... the car was fine (VW you ROCK!). 

We spent the next 6 hours in the rescue shelter and attempted to make our way home at 6am. The scenes going down home were unreal. Cars, trees, debris, rocks, mudslides etc strewn all over the roads. I've never seen anything like it. I had been awake for 26 hours so I was feeling a bit off. Unfortunately I had to go to work for a few hours until cover arrived. We only realised how bad it was when UTV News were reporting from the spot the video was taken from. It appeared we were in the worst affect area.

So, I don't mind telling you all i feel lucky to be here. That may sound ridiculous but you but I thought we were done for last night. 
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