Pensioner Anne Reay looks out on a living room full of cement bags - her once "beautiful" home still a building site 12 months on from the floods.

The 71-year-old, who has to put up her visiting grandchildren on camp beds and mattresses at the temporary house she will have to call home for months to come, describes the last year as "horrendous".

Twelve months on from the night she fled upstairs with her husband's ashes as floodwater swamped Warwick Road in Carlisle, she is still some way away from returning home.

Her house of more than 30 years was one of the many deluged by water as Storm Desmond struck Cumbria last December.

Now, with the arrival of the one-year anniversary of the floods, Anne is still not back in her house.

The grandmother, who has her three grandsons living with her part of the time, has been in rented accommodation for the last few months.

When they are all together two of them have to sleep on camp beds and mattresses on the floor because space in her temporary lodgings is so limited.

Mrs Reay's tale is an all too familiar one for hundreds of families across Cumbria.

Figures obtained by The Cumberland News show that almost 700 households across the county have still not been able to return to home, while many businesses are also still out of their permanent bases.

"This is my house, it was beautiful before the floods, it's not so beautiful now," Mrs Reay said.

She's been told it could be March before she's able to move back into the house she bought with late husband William in 1984 as a series of unfortunate circumstances have delayed the rebuilding process.

Even without these delays, she was not expected to return until the end of this year.

"I don't know how I stand up, we have been tested to the limit," she says.

Remembering when the storm struck, she continued: "When we knew the floods were starting I took enough food upstairs from the fridge freezer, I took my husband's ashes and some of our gadgets, iPads and phones with us.

"We were there until Tuesday afternoon.

"There was no electric, no lights and we were all in the bedroom together.

"All we could hear was a river below us, with crickets and frogs and insects. It was as if you were walking next to a river."

Mrs Reay remained in the house upstairs with her three grandsons Joshua 22, Luke, 14, and Jack, 12, who is registered blind.

Her daughter Kay, along with family pet Billy, a Jack Russell, managed to be rescued earlier.

"It's been horrendous," added Mrs Reay.

"They stay with me in this tiny house in Gleneagles Drive and my daughter Kay is battling some serious health problems at the age of 42."

Anne was forced to live in a hotel until February 12 because finding accommodation was so difficult.

But Anne says she's had an enormous amount of help from groups such as Carlisle City Council and its floods officer Jack Dilley, her insurance company, the building firm and the Cumbria Community Foundation.

Matters were made even worse two months ago when a water system upstairs overflowed and caused her house to flood for a second time.

In total 674 households have been unable to return home. In Carlisle there are 448, Eden has 53, Allerdale's total stands at 51 and South Lakeland has 122.

At the time of the disaster, around 6,400 homes and businesses across Cumbria were swamped by floods.