So much for plans!
The two sets of live broadcasts was now not happening. The satellite truck that had been assigned to our broadcasts had been reassigned to go to Hull.
It the reception of the hotel at the usual horrible early hour Richard and I headed in a separate direction from that of John Stapleton and Co.
They went off to Cockermouth and we went to the Calva bridge.
All we were to do were some piece to camera reports from beside the bridge and feed them back to GMTV using a small satellite system.
As ever things conspired to make the relatively simple and quick job a stressful and frustrating one.
Beside the condemned bridge Richard did a piece to camera.
He got the rushes loaded onto to the mac ready to feed over the little portable satellite dish.
It would all have been fine if the satellite dish had worked, but it did not want to do that.
No matter what Richard did, including a ritual incantation of curses the dish refused to spark in to life.
He tried to then get the stuff back to GMTV using a 3G mobile internet connection, but that was equally unhelpful.
The only way to get the stuff on air was to hack across to the satellite truck in Cokermouth where John was doing his bit.
It was my first sight of the wide main street that had been a raging river on Thursday night.
If the street had been a river it would not have been described as a narrow one. The amount of water that must have flowed down it four days ago was incredible, in normal circumstances only imaginable in the minds of the most extreme Hollywood effects guys.
Once that material had gone we scuttled back to the bridge to do another report from the bridge in the slowly brightening daylight.
Again that was done as quickly as we could and brought back to the truck for feeding.
With a sense of frustration we went for breakfast.
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