Wednesday 27 June 2018

Hot Summer Days in England

When we were in the snow in the Pyrenees, I remarked to Jason that we weren't really going to get much of a summer on account of us then going to the Alps in Spring, then back to the UK for June then out to monsoon season in Nepal for work.  Oh how wrong I was! Firstly we descended from the Pyrenees into the hot 'spring' of Spain (equivalent to a hot summer in the UK), then we went to the French Alps for more of the same and now we have just had the hottest month in living memory of dry sunny weather in the UK.  Let's face it though, a week of decent weather in Spring and then another sometime in the summer is what we normally get!

Leelu was fine when we were travelling, there were still snow patches about on our walks and he would gleefully jump into them and eat the snow and catch snowballs, no matter how dirty the snow as it melted!  He would also find shade under the truck and, to be honest, inside the camper truck was fairly cool on account of all the heavy weight insulation that it is made from (an ex-prison transport vehicle!).

Back in our corner of England, the sun has been streaming down and dog walks have had to be pushed to first thing in the morning and late on in the evening to save a lot of overheating from us both.  I periodically remove the tennis ball from him so that he can cool down through panting too.  We are lucky in that there is a lot of woodland around us to provide shady walks but we still have to be careful that the tarmac getting to the woods is not too warm - although it is starting to do a fine job of melting on some bits of road!

Leelu sits in various pieces of shade in my parent's garden but his favourite spot is in a tiny corner under the edge of a bush that grows next to the house - the shade of the bush and the coolness of stones combined are what makes it nice.

And so out we go for another, slightly cooler, late evening walk, past the heavily scented air laden with honeysuckle, roses and that wonderful smell of a warm forest.  The air is cooler but occasionally we walk through a much warmer patch of air that is still being heated by the sun.  The paths are all turning dusty, even the ones with a permanent mud patch in, they are all over grown as the rose bay willow herb and ferns grow taller than me and the soft new growth of the gorse brushes my arm as I push through.  And then the bright orange disc of sun slides towards the horizon turning the sky golden and then red to bring a welcome cool relief to us all.

For more of our adventures see https://daysaway.wixsite.com/website