Cyclist caught in flash flood

Twm Owen Local Democracy Reporter

A cyclist was caught by surprise flash flooding as Storm Bert wrecked havoc across the country over the weekend.

Kevin Daffey had been with a friend cycling on off road tracks around Chepstow Park Woods and Barbados Woods when heavy rain caused roads in Monmouthshire to flood. 

The 55-year-old captured the power of the flood water in Tintern on video.

Footage filmed by Mr Daffey at around 10.30am on Sunday, November 24 showed a road that had turned to a river as heavy rain, following Storm Bert, lashed the county and much of Wales. 

“We were just doing gravel bike riding and on trails, not the roads, and were quite surprised to come across the road being that flooded,” said Mr Daffey. 

“It seemed the flooding was were water had come streaming down on the roads.

Enormity

“We didn’t realise the enormity of the situation or how bad it was. At 9am, when we started, the roads weren’t too bad but they got worse and worse. 

“We weren’t in any danger we stayed pretty much away from the roads but you can see it was pretty fierce. Had we used the roads to try and get back where we had started that potentially would have been a problem and cars were struggling.”

The engineer, who lives near Chepstow, said: “I’ve lived in Monmouthshire 20 odd years and I’ve never seen anything like this before and I spoke with a number of people who said they’d never seen anything like this either.” 

Road closures were put in place across various parts of Monmouthshire from Sunday morning and by the evening there were 29 roads, or sections of road, that had been closed due to flooding. Eleven had reopened by mid morning on Monday.

Appeal

Monmouthshire County Council also said it had teams out to clear culverts and responding to flooding reports and appealed to people not to enter waterways to clear them. 

Flood warnings remained in place for the river Monnow, at Forge Road, Osbaston and Skenfrith on Monday though water levels were falling while a warning remained in place for the Wye at Monmouth with river levels expected to rise, though Natural Resources Wales said the heaviest rainfall had cleared the area. 

Across Monmouthshire 12 schools, including Monmouth Comprehensive and Abergavenny’s King Henry 3-19 school were closed on Monday. 

Video captured by dog walker Nick Bell showed how part of the A466 past Chepstow Racecourse was submerged by floodwater. 

He captured two four by four vehicles crossing the blocked section as other cars were stopped in their tracks, and a family attempted to wade through the water, that appeared knee-deep on the footpath. 

“I had taken the dog for a walk and I could see cars were stationary on the road and I thought there might have been an accident and walked down to see the cause of the problem and I could see it was a big pool of water had brought the vehicles to stop,” said the St Arvan’s resident. 

“I was about to walk back when I saw the four by four’s approaching and I thought I’d capture that image of them going through.” 

The 52-year-old said he’d “hunkered down” at home after filming the video shortly before 2pm on Sunday and had followed updates which showed the extent of flooding across Monmouthshire although he said local impact appeared to be the blocked road. 

Bus services were also affected through to Monday due to flooded routes with Newport Bus services between Monmouth and Chepstow cancelled on Monday morning due to flooding and fallen trees. Other services had to be rerouted due to the flooding.