Friday 12th June

It has been hot for a few days, even for South West France in early June this was unseasonably hot.  Wednesday morning it rained, but not terribly and had cleared up by lunchtime and a fine but cooler evening followed.  Thursday was market day and it started off a bit cloudy with rain forecast for later.  We had to go into Bergerac for some supplies for the café around five and as we were leaving at six it started raining heavily, big splodges of rain on the windscreen and bouncing off the roads.  It stopped after a bit and in the distance we could see dark grey clouds extending in grey sheets to the distant horizon.  “Rain over Eymet” I said.  “No, it must be as far away as Miramont” my wife replied.  As we got closer though we could see that I was right and Eymet was at the centre of the storm.  Lightning and thunder now ruled the angry black sky and the rain came down in buckets.  Then it came down even harder and it was like a sheet of water in front of us.  We sat for a few minutes opposite our house but neither of us wanted to cross the road.  We drove round and parked the car under the tin-roofed cow shed car park.  Then the skies really opened.  It was so noisy as the rain hit the roof you couldn’t hear yourself speak and came off the roof in a solid sheet of water.  The French tend to be slapdash in their building and most drainpipes empty straight onto the pavements and then run into the streets.  But suddenly these were gushing like firemen’s hoses and the street were literally streams and torrents at the crossroads.  All the streets in Eymet slope gently down to the River Dropt and the torrents soon became a river at the bottoms of these streets.  I have never seen rain like it.  When we got home we had a bit of water that had come in over the lintel as our pavement had been overrun by the river our street had become.  A few towels and we mopped it all up.  Then the rain stopped and I went to check the damage (none as it happened) in the café.  Amazingly the streets were almost dry again.  Not for long as the thunder and lightning returned, but not thankfully with such a vengeance and it rained most of the night.  I have seen rain before but nothing like this.