Letters / Enjoy it while it lasts
I’ve just returned from a short trip back to the UK where I experienced a wide range of weather conditions, which is why I found Wednesday’s story, At long last: a taste of summer (SN 29/5/13), a bit amusing.
Last Friday I was in central London. It was a cold day with constant rain where the temperature barely struggled into the low teens.
At the weekend I was in Lincoln where the temperatures rose to a pleasant 18 to 20 degrees with plenty of sunshine.
I returned to London on Monday afternoon to cloudy skies and threatening rain. It was also cold again.
On Tuesday morning I left a rainy, cold London and flew south to Madrid. By late evening I was in Aldeacentenera, the village I live in, where a day of sunshine had left the night air pleasantly warm.
However, on Wednesday morning, despite unbroken sunshine, a stiff breeze from the west kept it very cool. The temperatures struggled to even reach double figures by the afternoon and the day ended with thick clouds threatening rain.
We even had to switch the heating on, something almost unheard of for south west Spain a few days from the start of June.
Some of the older locals here in my part of Spain are saying this is the coldest spring they can remember. By now, at the end of May, we have usually had several days breaking 30 degrees, and even sometimes 35 degrees, but this year we are nowhere close.
In fact, on the day I left Spain to fly over to London (18 May), a TV weather report informed us that Madrid would have a daytime high temperature of just 11 degrees with a night time low temperature dropping to a wintry minus 5 degrees!
It would certainly be a bit ironic if I had to go 1,500 miles north to Shetland to find some decent summer weather this year.
So for those of you who have it, enjoy it for as long as it lasts, and I hope that’s from now to September at least.
We’ll probably get a summer down here in Spain eventually, but it doesn’t seem to be happening this week.
John Coutts
Aldeacentenera
Spain
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