The rain that has been is falling is filling the dykes up rapidly. This one has terracotta drainage pipes sticking out of the embankment wall that help to drain the field to the left and in the days before Christmas they were protruding like horizontal chimneys. Now they are under six inches of water.
The farmer has the plug in place so that the dyke will really fill up and the final water level will be two thirds of the way to the brink. During the long hot summer to come the water will be used to to irrigate the strawberries and other soft fruit for a bumper crop, lovely.
The dyke has an incredible population of sticklebacks as well as the usual frogs, toads, newts, eels and grass snakes but now small roach have mysteriously appeared in the dyke for the first time ever. They haven't been added by human hand so how did they get there?
Remember, 'long, hot summer', you read it first on the two terriers.