Date: 3 December 2025
As the rain fell and the rivers rose in December 2015 I spent the evening as the only guest in a hotel in Hawick.
As I filmed residents around the River Teviot battled to save what they could and move what they carry upstairs, I had more than half a mind wishing I could do the same myself.
I had only just moved into my house off Warwick Road in Carlisle where some of the worst flooding was beginning to be reported.
With the A7 impassable all I could do was follow developments on the radio and online as I ate a glum dinner with the barman in an otherwise empty dining room, wondering what I would return to find.
As it turned out I was very fortunate. Although the water outside my home was ankle deep as I walked to my front door, the house itself was flood free. I escaped the fate of so many homeowners by inches as the water level peaked just shy of the front step.
More than 2,000 properties weren’t as lucky, including people just a dozen houses down the road.
The floods, for the second time in ten years, proved just how powerless we are when nature flexes its considerable muscle.
By the time I returned to Carlisle the flooding had just hit its height. My neighbours and I stood on our doorsteps taking in the scene and hoping that no more rain would fall.
In the days to come the streets would be full of furniture and fittings destroyed by the water and residents tried to begin the long and painful process of pulling out what was damaged beyond repair and replacing it.
For days afterwards there was no power, and while I reported on the floods by day, my evenings were spent eating my dinner in the pubs and restaurants on Botchergate while charging my phone for the next day’s updates.
Returning home by torchlight I remember how dark it was on Greystone Road without street lights, and how quiet it was with so many of my neighbours having decamped to friends or family during the early stages of the rebuild.
It did bring the community together in the way only a crisis can. Neighbours supported each other in gutting their homes, churches and community centres opened their doors to people with nowhere else to go, and even Carlisle United’s football players took to the streets to offer their help to those in need.
Like I said, I was exceptionally lucky. Friends of mine who had lost everything in the floods of 2005, in what was supposed to be a once in a century flooding event were going through the same painful, stressful process all over again just ten years later.
For some it was the final straw. Many left the area in the months that followed unwilling or unable to trust that this would be the final time their homes would be ruined unless they moved their lives to properties on higher ground.
I know I am not alone in feeling wary when winter comes and the rain falls hard. We all know that since 2015 millions have been spent on flood defences, but that was also true in the aftermath of the floods of 2005.
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