The Wind Suddenly Rose

The wind suddenly rose and at the time we thought nothing of it. We snuggled together, giggling, in the caravan double bed. Jan and I were just married, too poor to afford a proper honeymoon, so we made do with a week on that South coast caravan site, What does comfort matter when you’re in love?

For England, that October week in 1987 hand been warm and sunny. The forecasters had mentioned a break in the weather, but nothing serious. How wrong they were to be proved.

My luminous watch gleamed one a.m. Something was odd, very odd. For one thing, the sky was blacker than I had ever seen it. For another, the wind didn’t gust, it kept up a relentless pressure which gradually increased. The noise had grown to a whine, rising steadily in pitch.

‘Jan, it looks as though we’re in for a gale’, I said, and we moved to the window to the lookout. Under the wind’s pressure, the frame seemed to be moving, and I had a sudden premonition of disaster. I grabbed Jan and threw us both to the wooden floor. A second later the frame blew out and straight across the room with a crack like a pistol shot. We were showered with glass fragments, but miraculously not cut. Now we could feel the full force of the gale. It blew furniture, bedding, our cases and everything else moveable up against the back wall.

‘Jan’, I shouted, ‘we’ve got to get out of here. The caravan will go next’.

‘I’m frightened, David’, she answered, ‘but you’re right.

‘We’ll need the rope’, I said. I crawled across the floor to the pile of furniture, found our anoraks and a length of stout rope we had used for securing the packs to our bicycles. we dressed as best we could and I tied the rope around our waists. ‘We’ll try hands and knees, I said.

The wind screamed into the caravan as I released the door catch. we could make no progress. My guess was that the wind was blowing off the sea at eighty miles per hour. Somehow we dragged ourselves outside and on to the grass where, in the file, we edged forward on our stomachs until we were clear of the caravans and in no danger from flying objects like bits of trees, dustbins, clotheslines and lumps of rock which had flashed over our heads. In the end, we reached an outcrop of rock where I secured the rope and where we could lie in its lee, exhausted, but in comparative safety.

The gale had become a hurricane. Over five hours its pitch rose to a steady scream sounding as though all the demons of hell had been let loose. Our caravan, and most of the others, became matchwood and just blew away. The waves smashed against the quay below, throwing small boats across the road to splinter against the houses. Inland, we could hear the thunder of heavy trees crashing to the ground. the nightmare began to end at first light.

Afterwards, we learnt that the hurricane and been the worst in recorded English history. The wind had gusted at one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Twenty people had been killed. Five million homes were blacked out. Up to fifteen million trees were destroyed. Total damage was estimated at 1 billion pounds.

Oddly enough, we found our bicycles and some of our possessions — three fields away!