porcupine tree the incident tour

CLOSURE/CONTINUATION.LIVE

OUT 8TH DECEMBER 2023

Blackest Eyes Live Visualiser Out Now!

Closure/Continuation.Live Out Now!

Harridan.live.

A concert film & live album that documents our 7th November 2022 performance at Amsterdam’s 17,000 capacity Ziggo Dome as part of the Closure/Continuation tour

In Absentia

Octane Twisted

The Delerium Years

• Mailing List

PORCUPINE TREE Announces Summer/Fall 2022 North American Tour Dates

Grammy Award -nominated British rock band PORCUPINE TREE will celebrate its long-overdue return to the global stage with new dates confirmed in North and South America. The legendary group's first tour since October 2010 in support of its upcoming album "Closure/Continuation" will kick off September 10 at Toronto, Ontario's Meridian Hall, followed by concerts in Montreal, Quebec; Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Irving, Texas; Denver, Colorado; San Francisco, California and Los Angeles, California; continuing with eagerly awaited October performances in Mexico City, Mexico (October 4) and Santiago, Chile (October 7). The North and South American show dates are presented by Live Nation and Paladin Artists .

Already announced performances in Europe begin October 21 in Berlin, Germany and then culminate at London, U.K.'s world-famous SSE Arena, Wembley on November 11.

General on-sales for PORCUPINE TREE 's "Closure/Continuation" North American dates begin Friday, March 11 at 10 a.m. local time at www.ticketmaster.com. Mexico and Chile general on-sales begin Wednesday, March 16 at 11 a.m. local time at Ticketmaster.com.mx (Mexico) and PuntoTicket.com (Chile). Fans who pre-order the album will have access to a special presale for the newly announced dates in both North and South America beginning Wednesday, March 9 at 10 a.m. through Thursday, March 10.

Tour dates:

Sep. 10 - Toronto, ON - Meridian Hall* Sep. 12 - Laval, QC - Place Bell* Sep. 14 - Boston, MA - MGM Music Hall at Fenway* Sep. 16 - New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall* Sep. 17 - Philadelphia, PA - The Met Philadelphia* Sep. 18 - Washington, DC - The Anthem* Sep. 20 - Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre* Sep. 23 - Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory* Sep. 25 - Denver, CO - Bellco Theatre* Sep. 28 - San Francisco, CA - The Masonic* Sep. 30 - Los Angeles, CA - Greek Theatre* Oct. 04 - Mexico City, MX - Pepsi Center^ Oct. 07 - Santiago, CL - Movistar Arena^ Oct. 21 - Berlin, DE - Max Schmelinghalle Oct. 23 - Vienna, AU - Gasometer Oct. 24 - Milan, IT - Forum Oct. 27 - Stockholm, SW - Globe Oct. 28 - Copenhagen, DK - Falkoner Theatre Oct. 30 - Katowice, PO - Spodek Hall Nov. 02 - Paris, FR - Le Zenith Nov. 04 - Stuttgart, DE - Porsche Arena Nov. 06 - Oberhausen, DE - KP Arena Nov. 07 - Amsterdam, NL - Ziggodome Nov. 09 - Zurich, CH - Halle 622 Nov. 11 - London, UK - SSE Arena, Wembley

* On sale Friday, March 11 at 10 a.m. local time

^ On sale Wednesday, March 16 at 11 a.m. local time

PORCUPINE TREE — Steven Wilson , Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison — has just shared "Of The New Day" , the latest track from "Closure/Continuation" , due on Friday, June 24 via Music For Nations / Megaforce Records .

" 'Of the New Day' is a song of rebirth, emerging from darkness," says Wilson . "It sounds deceptively simple, a recognizably atypical PORCUPINE TREE ballad. That is until you realize that the length of the bars is constantly changing, flipping between bars of regular 4/4 time to 3/4, to 5/4 to 6/4, 11/4, so that the track never settles into any steady time. It's what PORCUPINE TREE can sometimes do really well, come up with a basic idea that's almost intellectual or mathematical, but carry it off in a way that sounds completely natural and accessible. At least I hope there's no sense of us being clever for the sake of it or putting technique over musicality. That is unless you want to specifically home in on that side of the composition."

Last November, PORCUPINE TREE returned with its first new music in close to 12 years. "Harridan" , an epic, eight-minute-long reintroduction to PORCUPINE TREE 's truly singular sound, was accompanied by an official lyric video, streaming now via YouTube .

"Closure / Continuation" — which follows 2009's "The Incident" — will be available on standard CD, standard black vinyl 2x12" LP, white vinyl 2x12" LP, transparent blue vinyl 2x12" LP, and white cassette. In addition, a limited audiophile deluxe LP will also be available, cut at 45rpm on 3x12" clear vinyl in 12" slipcase box with two bonus tracks; a limited audiophile deluxe CD in 12" slipcase box will include the standard CD, a second disc with three bonus tracks and instrumentals, Blu-ray disc with 5.1/Dolby Atmos and HD audio versions of the album, and an exclusive album art book. pre-orders are available now.

" 'Harridan' and a few of the other new songs have been in play since shortly after the release of 'The Incident' ," said PORCUPINE TREE . "They initially lived on a hard drive in a slowly growing computer file marked PT2012, later renamed PT2015, PT2018, and so on. There were times when we even forgot they were there, and times when they nagged us to finish them to see where they would take us. Listening to the finished pieces, it was clear that this wasn't like any of our work outside of the band — the combined DNA of the people behind the music meant these tracks were forming what was undeniably, unmistakably, obviously a PORCUPINE TREE record. You'll hear all of that DNA flowing right through 'Harridan' ."

One of the most forward-thinking, genre-defying rock bands of any era, PORCUPINE TREE was founded in 1987 by renowned musician/producer Steven Wilson as an outlet for the experimental recordings he was making outside of his acclaimed post-rock duo NO-MAN . With the addition of keyboard player Richard Barbieri and drummer Gavin Harrison , PORCUPINE TREE soon evolved into a proper band, releasing 10 studio albums between 1992 and 2009. Each new release saw PORCUPINE TREE exploring new musical ideas, their expansive music shifting from pastoral psychedelic rock and ambient electronic soundscapes to experimental pop and propulsive metal. Later releases like 2007's Grammy Award -nominated "Fear Of A Blank Planet" and 2009's "The Incident" — the band's biggest seller thus far, reaching the top 25 in both the U.S. and the U.K. — saw PORCUPINE TREE effortlessly melding distinctive genres to create a groundbreaking musical universe all their own.

As relentlessly creative on stage as they are in the studio, PORCUPINE TREE proved innovative live performers known for sonic innovation and inventive visual productions. In October 2010, the band entered a period of hiatus following a spectacular concert at London's Royal Albert Hall — their biggest live show to date.

The most collaborative album of their highly lauded career, "Closure / Continuation" doesn't simply pick up where PORCUPINE TREE left off back in 2010. While the familiar traits of the band's idiosyncratic sound remain intact, the new album very much places PORCUPINE TREE in the here and now, with greater texture and color than ever before.

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• September 11, 2022

Porcupine Tree Kicks Off First Tour In 12 Years at Toronto’s Meridian Hall

• By Ryan Dillon
• No Comments

Last night (September 10), U.K. rockers Porcupine Tree kicked off their first tour in 12 years at Meridian Hall in Toronto. Fresh off the release of their new album, CLOSURE/CONTINUATION , the band who headed the prog-rock revival of the 90s returned to the realm of live performance with a 2-part concert experience in the great white north. Despite a scattering of shows earlier in the summer of 2022, this performance marks the band’s first official tour together since 2010 when they toured in support of their 2009 album, The Incident . Last night’s show kicked things off as this tour has Porcupine Tree going around the world until mid-November. 

Largely credited for keeping the prog-rock scene relevant in the 90s, the Steven Wilson-led troupe is known for its collage-style approach to the classic progressive rock sound bringing in elements from genres that range between post-punk and electronic music. Their 2022 album marks the band’s first full project together since their aforementioned 2009 LP. The band landed on Glide’s list of shocking band reunions that happened within the last year , and their return to the stage was so effortless you wouldn’t believe it’s been over a decade since their last time up there. 

Porcupine Tree’s first show of the new tour was stacked with live debuts and classics. This was the first time the band had a chance to perform songs from CLOSURE/CONTINUATION , and they took full advantage of it. 7 of the 21 songs performed last night in Toronto were from the brand new LP, songs like “Harridan”, “Of The New Day”, and “Rats Return” all saw a performance for the first time ever. The band didn’t hesitate to reach back in their storied discography, they performed “Drown With Me” from their seminal 2002 album In Absentia and the title track from their 2007 album, Fear of a Black Planet for the first time since 2008. From that same album, they performed the hit “Anesthetize” for the first time since 2008 and even dusted off “Last Chance To Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled” for the first time since 2003. 

With Porcupine Tree feeling right at home on stage, their upcoming tour is sure to be one of the better reunion moments of the year. The band has another date in Quebec before coming to the states with stops in Boston, New York, Denver, and more. 

Check out the full setlist, tour dates, and footage from the first show of the tour below: 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jason McKenzie (@jsnmcknz)

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• album review
• Porcupine Tree
• progressive rock

Review: Porcupine Tree’s Expansive Live Album Shows Progressive Rock’s Alive and Well

by Hal Horowitz December 11, 2023, 5:00 am

Videos by American Songwriter

Porcupine tree closure/continuation.live (music for nations/megaforce) 4 out of 5 stars.

Fans of the longstanding contemporary progressive rock band Porcupine Tree who might have thought their days were over can now rejoice. This expansive, two-and-a-half hour, 21-song, live CD/DVD captures all the twisty time signatures, thunderous widescreen intensity and drama one would expect from the Steven Wilson-led UK outfit.

As prog-tock fans know, Wilson is an auteur with a thriving solo career as a musician, acclaimed expert remixer (often rejiggering Dolby Atmos versions of older progressive/art-rock fare) and producer. So it came as a surprise when he re-formed his popular outfit Porcupine Tree to record the potent Closure/Continuation in 2022 after having left the band dormant since its last set of originals, The Incident , was released in 2009. The ensuing live tour featured two other longtime PT members, drummer Gavin Harrison and keyboardist Richard Barbieri, along with a bassist and second guitarist added for the road.

The set list covers seven numbers from C/C , interspersed with many of the band’s more popular work dating back to the mid-tempo, slide guitar-driven “Even Less” from 1999. Visuals and especially audio (in Dolby Atmos, naturally) are stunning, replicating the effect of being there as Wilson and band unravel their complex tunes with the extra energy the live stage brings.

The music is generally darker, often more elaborate, and occasionally louder than say Yes, with layers of guitar and keyboard interaction that drift, collide and often explode in showers of sonic sparks. The tracks veer to the long side with the near 18-minute “Anesthetize,” a milestone from the crucial 2007 release Fear of a Blank Planet , followed by the new album’s “Chimera’s Wreck” clocking in at over 10 minutes.

Porcupine Tree’s players are world class, but the magnificence of the show is how they temper their approach, shifting from the glistening classical piano open of “Sentimental” to the almost Dream Theatre-styled gnarled, thumping, at times metal-inspired concentration of “Harridan,” the latter reminiscent of some of King Crimson’s work (which Wilson has remixed).

Song titles such as the expansive “Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It’s Recycled” reflect Wilson’s overall dystopian vision evident in the music’s ominous overtones. Nothing has “hit single” potential of course, as Porcupine Tree avoids chorus/verse/bridge forms for more intricate, multi-faceted pieces.

Those who thought prog-rock was dead or dying need only push play anywhere on this widescreen example of the sound at its most intoxicating and propulsive. And experiencing it on a quality surround system will convince even those unfamiliar with the songs that Porcupine Tree is a wildly talented band that pushes their music to the edge, and back again, with precision, passion and the determination to prove their genre is alive and well.

Photo by Anna Webber/Getty Images

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© 2024 American Songwriter

Porcupine Tree Announce First North American Tour in 12 Years

Last November, British prog-metal masters Porcupine Tree broke their 11-year hiatus by releasing a new song and announcing a new album called Closure/Continuation , their first since 2009's The Incident . As it turns out, the record (due out June 24th) isn't the only thing they have in store for 2022. Today (March 8th), in addition to dropping another new track called "Of the New Day," the trio have unveiled that they'll be embarking on their first North American tour in over 12 years later this fall. 

The trek begins in Toronto on September 10th and will hit major cities throughout the U.S. and Canada — Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, Denver, etc. — before wrapping up in L.A. on September 30th. Tickets for all the North American dates go on sale March 11th at 10 a.m. local time and you can get yours here .

See the full routing below and hear their new song above via YouTube. Closure/Continuation is out June 24th via Music For Nations/Megaforce Records and pre-orders are available here .

Porcupine Tree 2022 North American tour dates:  9/10 - Toronto, ON - Meridian Hall 9/12 - Laval, QC - Place Bell 9/14 - Boston, MA - MGM Music Hall at Fenway 9/16 - New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall 9/17 - Philadelphia, PA - The Met Philadelphia 9/18 - Washington, DC - The Anthem 9/20 - Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre 9/23 - Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory 9/25 - Denver, CO - Bellco Theatre 9/28 - San Francisco, CA - The Masonic 9/30 - Los Angeles, CA - Greek Theatre

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YoYoMancuso STAFF (2) "The Incident" is just 76 minutes of ambitious songwriting that feels more like a demo tha... Brendan Schroer STAFF (2) Ambition meets disappointment.... MorningView425 (4) Extremely talented and absolutely professional, Porcupine Tree releases another strong alb... EVedder27 (3) Porcupine Tree attempts to continue their trend of outstanding concept albums, but trip ov...

e210013 (4) Is this the end of the road for Porcupine Tree? Is “The Incident” their swan song?... Nosferatwo (2.5) For the first time, Porcupine Tree tread water.... bodiesinflight57 (4.5) A culmination of fifteen years as the world's most relevant progressive rock band.... Cragorio (3.5) Not the best, not the worst. A very good Porcupine Tree album....

Nick Mongiardo (3.5) The Incident is another solid entry into the Porcupine Tree discography despite some lackl...

The Incident

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Porcupine Tree|The Incident

The Incident

Porcupine Tree

• Released on 9/14/09 by Kscope
• Main artists: Porcupine Tree
• Genre: Progressive Rock

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Over the years, trying to determine what is true "prog rock" and what is not has become an increasingly tricky proposition. In the early '70s, it was easy -- any band that performed "suites" that extended across entire album sides and dressed in capes and/or cloaks was a dead giveaway. However, when the early '80s rolled around, most former prog rockers trimmed out the fat from their compositions (and exchanged their medieval wear and kimonos for what looked like sports coats). Ever since, there have been bands that have aligned themselves to either of the aforementioned prog rock approaches. But along came Porcupine Tree, who somehow have found a way to incorporate both into their 2009 effort, The Incident. Set up similarly to Rush's 1978 classic, Hemispheres, The Incident is comprised of a single long song -- the title track -- that features many different movements (which would have taken up the entire side one back in the good ol' days of vinyl), as well as a handful of shorter compositions that close the album. The aforementioned title track will certainly be the talk of the album, as it manages to incorporate bombast and melody (the sixth movement, which shares the album's title), rock ("Octane Twisted"), Yes' folky moments ("The Seance"), and Tool-like grooves ("Circle of Manias"), before it all gently floats away on a cloud of fairy dust ("I Drive the Hearse"). That said, unlike early proggers who favored meandering instrumental doodling over succinct songwriting, Porcupine Tree always favor the importance of memorable songs over flashy solos, which certainly makes the group one of the top modern-day prog rock bands. © Greg Prato /TiVo

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Porcupine Tree, MainArtist - Steven Wilson, Composer - Hands Off It's Mine Publishing (Universal/MCA Music Ltd), MusicPublisher

(C) 2009 Porcupine Tree Ltd (P) 2009 Porcupine Tree Ltd under exclusive licence to Snapper Music Ltd

Porcupine Tree, MainArtist - Gavin Harrison, Composer - Richard Barbieri, Composer - Steven Wilson, Composer - Colin Edwin Balch, Composer - Hands Off It`s Mine Publishing, MusicPublisher - Orange Asylum Music, MusicPublisher - Monokotunes, MusicPublisher - Squatter Madras Music (Universal/MCA Music Ltd), MusicPublisher

Porcupine Tree, MainArtist - Gavin Harrison, Composer - Richard Barbieri, Composer - Steven Wilson, Composer - Colin Edwin Balch, Composer - Orange Asylum Music, MusicPublisher - Hands Off It's Mine Publishing, MusicPublisher - Monokotunes, MusicPublisher - Squatter Madras Music (Universal/MCA Music Ltd), MusicPublisher

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About the album.

• 1 disc(s) - 18 track(s)
• Total length: 01:15:49
• Composer: Various Composers
• Label: Kscope
• Genre: Pop/Rock Rock Progressive Rock

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Keep Your Courage

Natalie Merchant

You're the One

Rhiannon Giddens

Pronounced Leh-Nerd-Skin-Nerd

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Ambrose Akinmusire

In Absentia

CLOSURE / CONTINUATION. LIVE. AMSTERDAM 07/11/22

Fear of a Blank Planet

War Of Being

The Restoration - Joseph, Pt. Two

Misplaced Childhood

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Richard Wright

The German valley that was swept away: ‘The cemeteries gave up their dead’

When the Ahr River burst its banks in 2021, 188 people died and whole villages and towns were destroyed. Could it all happen again?

W hen the waters rose, Meike and Dörte Näkel weren’t worried. People in this part of the world, the Ahr valley in Germany, are used to it. The river flooded in 2016, bursting its banks and rising almost four metres , and before that in 2013, 1910 and 1804. Many lives were lost in 1804 and 1910, in catastrophes remembered only in stories read from history books to bored schoolchildren. The sisters’ great-grandmother Anna Meyer lived through the 1910 flood, although she never spoke of it to Meike and Dörte.

They are the fifth generation of their family to make wine in the village of Dernau. Meike, 44, is blond, thoughtful and a little serious; Dörte, 42, who has dark hair that comes down to her waist, is quicker to laugh. Both have the same steady gaze. Their father, Werner Näkel, is a hero in the Ahr, widely credited with transforming it from a place where sugar was added routinely to cheap, bad wine into a region with award‑winning vintages.

After studying at the prestigious Hochschule Geisenheim University, the sisters took over the family estate, Meyer-Näkel , and its 23-hectare (57-acre) vineyard. Its winery, where the wine is made and stored, is in a warehouse on the banks of the Ahr.

This is red wine country. Tourists come from across Germany and the surrounding countries to hike the red wine trail, walking from village to village to drink pinot noir from local producers, sometimes at tables in their vineyards. The hills are stubbled with vines that, from a distance, look like the quills on a porcupine. The slopes are so steep that you wonder how anyone could pick the grapes without tumbling down, yet every September the harvest is brought in without incident, mostly by hand. The Ahr threads its way through the villages of Schuld, Altenahr and Dernau, then Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler – the biggest town in the Ahr valley – and on to Sinzig, before joining the Rhine near Bonn.

By 8am on 14 July 2021, the rain was pounding and the river was near-bursting. The sisters and their employees worked quickly to lay down sandbags and close the doors and windows to the winery. When everything was secure, Meike and Dörte sent everyone home.

After that, it all happened so quickly. Around 10pm, the Ahr burst its banks. A gate was smashed by a wave of water. The winery was flooded within an hour. The corrugated iron sheeting on the warehouse walls began to buckle and fold. The water rose so quickly that the sisters took refuge up a flight of stairs in the winery, but they weren’t sure if the metal platform on which they were sitting would collapse. There was no way of accessing the roof and nowhere else to go. “We thought: it’s not so far – maybe we can swim to the vineyards, to get to a drier place,” says Dörte.

They entered the water. It was only 15 metres or so from the winery to higher ground. “But there was no chance of swimming,” Dörte says. “The water just took you where it wanted to.” For a while, they clung to a fence, until the water rose so much that the fence was beneath their feet. The water was five metres deep, at least, and fast-flowing. It was relentless; they could no more swim their way out of it than they could make it run uphill. Just when they feared the worst, the sisters washed into a plum tree.

They would spend the next eight hours shivering in its branches. It was so loud. Boom. Crash. Boom. The roar of the water, but also the screams of their neighbours, trapped on their roofs. They had a torch. Terrifying, random things streaked past in the dark. Trees, cars, shipping containers, petrol tankers; entire houses, detached from their foundations like boats that had slipped their moorings. The tree on which they were sitting suddenly didn’t seem so sturdy. “There was no chance to get to another place,” says Meike. “The strength of the water was so incredible.”

The sisters turned off the light. If something was barrelling towards them, a chewed-up tree or a fuel truck, it was better not to know. If death couldn’t be avoided, why look it in the face? The sisters sat in the darkness, listening to the shrieks and groans of the crashing water and the wails from nearby rooftops, and waited.

U pstream of Dernau, the chaos had begun hours earlier. The rain had fallen with such intensity that by 5.30pm the main road in Altenahr had become a second river. People sought refuge on higher ground, in the village’s 15th-century church. Around 9pm, the villagers who had stayed on lower land to protect their homes and businesses began shouting to each other. The river is coming , they yelled. The river is coming.

Across the region, 150mm of rain fell in 72 hours . The water level is believed to have risen as much as 10 metres that night, although no one knows for certain, because all the measuring apparatus was washed away, leaving only high-water marks on buildings for the scientific record.

All over the Ahr, in Ahrweiler, in Dernau, in Altenahr, the cemeteries gave up their dead. The freshly buried rose first, then the long-departed. Rescue workers would later sift through the mud and the silt to recover these bodies, but also those whose lives were stolen by the flood waters. That night, 188 people died in Germany , many older people who were asleep or unable to get to higher floors.

The Ahr valley is the Florida of Germany, with a high percentage of elderly residents who retire to towns such as Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler for the climate and scenery. Many were not warned of what was coming, even when it might have saved lives. Twelve disabled people died in a care home in Sinzig nine and a half hours after the Ahr had flooded upstream . Evacuation should have been possible. German prosecutors are considering bringing negligent homicide charges against an Ahrweiler district official; the individual in question denies any wrongdoing.

Entire buildings were washed away with their inhabitants trapped inside. Bodies were found as far away as Rotterdam, 150 miles north-west. Steffi Nelles, 48, the owner of Haus Caspari, a family-owned guesthouse on the main square in Altenahr, watched in horror from her upstairs window as the house across from her was wrenched from its foundations with an elderly couple stuck inside. She didn’t know if her building would be next.

In Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, scarcely a street in either of the twinned towns was spared. About 8,800 homes were destroyed across the region. When the waters receded on the morning of 15 July, people who had lived in Ahrweiler their entire lives couldn’t orient themselves. “It was like I was standing on the moon,” says Marc Adeneuer, 60, a wine producer. “It was unbelievable.” He stood in the town square for 15 minutes, trying to understand where he was. He went to the cemetery where his son and his father were buried. Their headstones had disappeared.

In their plum tree, as they waited for a rescue they weren’t sure would come, Meike and Dörte tried to keep their spirits up. First, they assessed their options. What had become of the 380 barrels in their winery? Had any survived intact? They soon came to the conclusion that everything must have been destroyed. They tried to remember if they had flood insurance. (They did.) The next question: would they cut their losses and walk away? “It sounds really crazy, but I think it was a survival thing, from the brain,” says Meike. They were in accord: they would rebuild. “We are like our wine,” says Meike. “We have deep roots inside.”

I n the historic town of Ahrweiler today, the fish-scale roofs glint in the winter sun and the medieval timbered houses lean charmingly. But inside the buildings, everything is new, from the plush carpets to the thick, richly patterned wallpaper. In Hotel Villa Aurora, the most luxurious hotel in town, art deco lamps gleam gold and bronze. At the nearby Adenauer winery, you can drink from fine crystal glasses on pale wood benches. Everything is new and nicely done.

It was paid for with insurance money, government money – federal and state authorities made available €30bn (about £26bn) for reconstruction – and the owners’ own funds. “We have to get away from this idea that: ‘Oh my God, there was a flood, we are such poor people, please come here and visit us because it’s so bad,’” says Carolin Groß, the head of marketing at Ahrwein, an association of local wine producers . “No. We want to talk about quality.” Adeneuer agrees: “We don’t want pity.”

But the tourists haven’t returned in their old numbers. There aren’t enough hotels open, but, more importantly, the infrastructure isn’t there. The railway line between Walporzheim and Ahrbrück was washed away in the flood and won’t be rebuilt until the end of 2025. The picturesque Ahr cycle path is mostly closed. Many of the campsites that appealed to younger and more cost-conscious tourists won’t reopen; they should never have been permitted in the first place. The hillsides are too rocky and vertiginous, while the schist bedrock doesn’t allow water to infiltrate, meaning that rainwater shoots off the hills in torrential flows.

Without enough beds, or a way of getting to the nearby cities of Cologne and Bonn, the tourists mostly don’t come; when they do, they visit only for the day, leaving before dinner instead of wining and dining until late in the night. “When you want to spend your holiday, you want to have it nice,” says Dörte. “It’s understandable. People want to help the Ahr valley, but they don’t want to walk through the dirt on their holidays for two weeks.”

All along the Ahr, and especially in the villages further up the valley, construction trucks spray gravel across the road and spindly cranes pick at the hillsides. The landscape is pockmarked with diggers and piles of earth. Everywhere you go, you see construction placards and metal fencing, workers in hard hats and scaffolders with poles, portable toilets and piles of building materials. Almost three years on, children go to school in shipping containers. You will find derelict houses along all the main streets in Altenahr and Dernau. Some are being renovated by students, some await demolition, some have owners who are involved in tortuous disputes with governments and insurers.

Nelles is in the latter camp. When I visit her at Haus Caspari, the Altenahr guesthouse her grandfather bought after the second world war, she is close to tears from stress. The main, eight-bedroom guesthouse – there are two smaller buildings that Nelles hasn’t even begun to refurbish – is a building site, with more than a dozen people at work. We struggle to hear each other over the burring of drills. Nelles says she was assured by various professionals that government funds and insurance payouts would cover the cost of her rebuild, only to realise later that she couldn’t claim as much as she had hoped, by which point work had already started. She is €800,000 short of what she needs to complete the work.

“So, we have no plan for what to do now,” she says, blinking back tears. “This is my parents’ house. We made this plan and everything was going to be finished for them and they were looking forward to it. They’re in their late 70s. They can’t really understand it.”

After the floods, when the entire German press decamped to the Ahr, Nelles’ neighbours gave interviews and started crowdfunding pages that raised thousands of euros. “You think you’re so stupid,” says Nelles. “Why didn’t you go on television and put your kids in the front row and say: ‘We are poor people – please give us money’? Because other people did that and they are now finished with building – they live a good life.”

Hundreds of people travelled to the Ahr in the aftermath of the floods to work as volunteers. Nelles would be working in a human chain to shift flood debris and suddenly a total stranger would join the chain. “You had this feeling you are not alone,” she says. “People came and helped you.” But there were also disaster tourists. “Families with their children, in white trousers, taking pictures,” Nelles says in disbelief. She felt “like a monkey in a zoo”.

At the time of my visit, Nelles has only enough money to pay the builders for another fortnight. “We don’t know what will happen,” she says. “In the next two weeks, something must happen. I don’t know what. But something must work out.” She takes me on a tour of the partly refurbished building. The reception area has been freshly tiled with green porcelain; the day the tiles arrived was a good day. “For a few minutes, you feel really good,” she says. “You think you did a really good job. But then reality hits you again.”

We go into the basement, where an electrician is at work on a fuse board that takes up most of the wall. This will be Haus Caspari’s kitchen, where Nelles’ sister Andrea Babic, 45, will bake her cakes, which are famous in the village. Babic is with us. She inspects her €8,000 industrial cake mixer, which has been recently delivered.

The sisters have invested in better windows, relocated a lift, blocked up their basement windows and built a small wall to go around the perimeter of the guesthouse. But it won’t protect them from another flood of the magnitude of 2021’s – they know that. So much expense to rebuild. All that equipment in their basement. And the Ahr scarcely three metres away.

T here is a well-known term in hydrological circles: flood dementia. “Every couple of decades, people tend to forget about historical events,” says Stefan Greiving, a professor of spatial planning at the Technical University of Dortmund.

The Ahr has always flooded, sometimes with significant loss of life. In 1910, 200 people died in the valley. In a tunnel leading into Altenahr, plaques denote the high-water marks of historic floods. “In the immediate period after the event, there’s a small window of time for implementing and approving radical solutions,” says Greiving. “But this is probably limited to a couple of months after the event.” After the 1910 floods, officials considered building a reservoir near Rech, a small village in the Ahr, to collect water in case of flooding. Instead they built the Nürburgring racing track, to create jobs during a time of high unemployment.

Flood-affected communities in the Ahr are actually disincentivised from making their homes more flood-resilient. In the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, which includes Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler and surrounding villages, people are required to rebuild on a one-for-one basis, meaning exactly as they were. If you are rebuilding a school, say, and you want to move the science laboratory from the ground floor to the third, so that equipment can be protected in the case of another flood, insurers and government funds won’t cover the cost of fitting. Everything needs to be as it was.

“Sometimes, I have the feeling that people could forget about the floods too early,” says Charlotte Burggraf, an employee of the district administration of Ahrweiler. “When you ask them in 10 years, they’ll say: ‘The floods won’t come again.’ But they will. And you don’t know when. You need to be getting protection and you need early-warning systems. And from what I see, that’s maybe a problem in the future. People may forget how dramatic the events of 2021 really were.”

Across the Ahr, people have rebuilt as before, without flood mitigation measures in place. “We see this problem,” says Meike. “They do exactly as it was before. That is a very strange thing. For a lot of people, it’s a very positive mental thing, making things how they were. Perhaps they try to help themselves, by making it as it was.”

The flood of 14 July was particularly catastrophic for multiple reasons. It was the summer, so no one was prepared for it. It happened during the night-time. The authorities failed to issue warnings and mandatory evacuations until it was too late. But it was more than that. The Ahr had not flooded with significant loss of life for more than 100 years. People weren’t prepared. And their homes had been built in places that never should have been inhabited, let alone densely populated.

The Romans knew to build away from the Ahr; the medieval church fathers, too. The churches in Altenahr and Dernau did not flood, because they were built on higher land. When Dörte and Meike were children, they had to walk uphill to their school, situated in an old monastery in Ahrweiler. They would gripe about the steep climb. But the monastery didn’t flood, either. Their father used to tell them that, when he was a child, there were flood-retention areas around the Ahr, which are now built up. Houses were built up stone steps from the road.

“Historical knowledge was more valued in the past,” says Greiving. “Most city centres were built on top of hills, in safe areas. The later extensions to the city entered the flood-prone areas.” Even the best-designed flood defences may fail, particularly in an age of climate emergency . “There is a responsibility for individuals to prepare themselves for extreme events,” says Greiving. “And that is, in our modern societies, particularly in larger cities, an enormous weakness.”

Meike says: “I think, in the past, people were more careful about where they built. Why have we forgotten? Are we so stupid or self‑confident that nothing can harm us? That is kind of crazy.”

W hen they were studying wine cultivation at university, the Näkel sisters were taught to strip everything away and use only the evidence of their senses. They learned to smell things before tasting them. “Who, in our society, smells an apple before biting into the apple?” asks Meike.

Their father, Werner, had already taught them that winemakers should think not in years, or even decades, but generations. A vineyard will take five years before it produces its first yield and a decade before the yield is of any quality. “The older the vines, the better the wine will be,” says Meike. The week before we meet, Dörte and Meike replanted a vineyard Werner planted with his father when he was 18. The crop was still good, but the rows were too close together for modern methods of harvesting. “Otherwise, we’d have kept it,” says Dörte. “Because they were really nice old vines, with the roots going very deep.”

For years, the sisters had seen the climate crisis affect the way they worked. Their summers went from being wet to dry and hot. There were weeks without rain, something that would have been impossible in the past. Rather than removing the leaves from the vine to keep the grapes dry and healthy, now the sisters left them, to cast a shadow. The harvest moved forward a month, from October to September.

After the July 2021 floods, they knew that climate breakdown would make these extreme weather events more likely. “My father always said: ‘We cannot change the weather,’” says Meike. “We have to work with it.” They drive me to their vineyard, up twisting roads. The vines tumble away from us down the hillside. “Humans are just tiny against nature,” says Dörte, surveying her vines from the top of a hill.

Werner taught them to plan long-term when planting their vines, to understand and respect nature. Their university lecturers taught them to listen to their senses. So, Dörte and Meike have decided to relocate their winery from the banks of the Ahr to the top of a hill. It took them a year and a half to persuade the farmer to sell the land. Their insurance will not cover the relocation, so they are putting up the money themselves. They hope to start construction this winter.

“We are very sure that, in the lives of our children, or our grandchildren, something like the flood will happen again,” says Meike. “And when you look at how a winery works, or what it means to work in a vineyard, we are always talking in generations. What I plan now must also stand in the next generation.” So, they have to move the winery. It’s the only responsible thing to do.

After the flood, the sisters thought they had lost everything. But then the phone calls came: a barrel of wine had been found in this person’s garage, or in front of that building. It was a race against time to recover the 300kg barrels before the wine spoiled in the sun. In all, the sisters rescued nine barrels. They call these wines the Lost Barrels . Afterwards, they had to bring in that year’s harvest. “We didn’t have our own machines; we didn’t even have a bucket,” says Dörte. They wanted to commemorate, in a small way, everything they had been through. They didn’t want to avoid talking about the flood, as their great‑grandmother had done. So they put waves on their 2021 bottles. “We want to keep the memory alive,” says Meike. “To talk about the flood.”

Meike and Dörte are outliers in the Ahr. It has been nearly two years since the floods and flood preparedness is not on the national agenda. Some municipalities have implemented useful initiatives, but there is no overall leadership, says Greiving. “There is no long-term vision. What is the overarching goal or objective for a flood-resilient Ahr valley in 20 years?”

Before I leave the Ahr, I walk along the main promenade that connects Ahrweiler and Bad-Neuenahr. The river is low and gentle today. There is construction all along it, on both sides of the bank. Recently rebuilt houses sparkle in the sun. I pause in front of a white, three-storey house that looks to be freshly repainted. A child’s bedroom on the ground floor faces the river. I can see a brightly patterned duvet and clowns hanging from a mobile. From their bedroom, a few metres away, the child will see the Ahr flow past. As they sleep, it will continue to flow, in all its danger and beauty.

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