FORTY TOWERS
The storm winter 1999/2000
This year France saw the worst storm it has experienced in well over fifty years, it was the tail end of a hurricane with wind speeds recorded up to 160 MPH the result of this storm in a country where storms are rare was total devastation, some 3 million trees were blown
over and many telegraph poles, electric power pylons, etc. leaving many areas of the country with no electricity or telephone for many days and in some cases many weeks. The roads were blocked by fallen trees and many rivers virtually dammed by the fallen trees and debris. The rain fall was tremendous and many rivers over flowed there banks causing widespread flooding. Many building were severely damaged.
Our farm was in the middle of any area very badly effected by the storm and whilst our buildings escaped with minimal damage, a few tiles blown off, the trees faired rather less well with some 80 mature trees, mainly oaks, blown over across the roads and river. We spent around four weeks just clearing the worst of this away so as to open up the roads and clear obstructions in the river Vincou which runs through our farm. The river which is usually a one metre (3ft) deep quite babbling stream turned into a 4.5 metre (15ft) deep raging torrent sweeping whole trees away and depositing then miles down stream. We had great difficulty with some trees across the river and below you can see a few pictures of us clearing away some of the difficult trees. We hope that this kind of event will not happen again for at least another 50 to 100 years.
