Train services suspended as lines out of Manchester Piccadilly and towards Ribblehead blocked by floods

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A clean-up operation has started in Yorkshire Dales villages inundated with silt and mud after severe downpours that led to flooding overnight.

Witnesses described rain sweeping in off hillsides in waterfalls, “blowing” riverbanks and devastating infrastructure. Members of the public wore wet-weather gear as they cleared pools of water in the hamlet of Fremington, near Reeth and Grinton, in North Yorkshire.

The fire service said it had received about 115 calls concerning flooding incidents in Leyburn and Reeth on Tuesday evening. Photographs and videos from the nearby village of Grinton showed a bridge, which was used in the 2014 Tour de France, in ruins.

Wilf Bishop, 77, from Reeth, described the weather conditions as “appalling, absolutely appalling”. He added: “We’d just got back from a walk on the hillside and it started to rain a little, then within minutes it was this astonishing downpour.

“You can see just walking around the village the effect that it has had. People’s gardens are covered in silt and mud, their lawns don’t exist any more. The farmers – the hay that they’ve just taken and baled up has been strewn everywhere, so that will be written off. I guess livestock has been lost, I don’t know. It’s turned this part of Reeth, the lower part, into a virtual lake, and everyone is working hard to try and recover it.”

Commuters faced chaos Wednesday morning as heavy rain flooded the railway between Manchester Piccadilly and Crewe/Stoke-on-Trent, causing both lines to be blocked.

Northern Rail said trains had been suspended between Ribblehead and Kirkby Stephen after a landslip between Dent and Ribblehead.

Train services between Salford Crescent and Wigan Wallgate have been forced to run at reduced speed, and commuters were told to expect delays and cancellations.

In Manchester, an airport road was closed for the third day in a row due to heavy rain. The A555 Manchester airport link road was entirely submerged in deep flood water Wednesday morning despite being pumped clear the day before.



In the Yorkshire Dales, a moorland road used in the 2014 Tour de France was impassable due to flood water. Mountain rescue crews were called out on Tuesday to help police and fire services rescue people in cars along Grinton Moor Road between Grinton and Leyburn.

The flooding also led to traffic delays across England. Traffic England issued flooding alerts on the A5103 northbound between the M56 and junction with the M60, and warned drivers of congestion caused by flooding on the M56 eastbound between junctions J7 and J3A.

The Met Office issued weather warnings for Scotland and parts of central and northern England. Up to 40mm of rain in two hours was predicted in places.

The Met Office has warned that as the rainfall continuesthere could further delays and cancellations to train and bus services, and sudden flooding could lead to difficult driving conditions and someroad closures.

The Environment Agency has issued 12 flood warnings across the UK, from North Yorkshire, Lancashire and the West Midlands. The flooding has affected properties and roads, blocking access to certain areas.

• This article was amended on 1 August 2019. An earlier version referred to the village of Cogden Gill. This should have been the village of Grinton.