There has been a lot of rain. I've crossed this low bridge into the village of Charlton in Hertfordshire many times over the years. Today it had become a ford.

 

 The River Hiz rises the other side of the village where bubbling springs feed from wet woods into a large millpond. When the water is this high it's a sure sign of a wet winter, particularly in recent decades after a pumping station was built nearby. There are about two hundred chalk streams in the world. Most are in southern England and the Hiz is one of them.

And it really is a very wet winter when the water floods from the back end of the woods into the fields beyond.