It looks like Summer is finally here. The sun has decided to come out at last. Just as the schools break up too – normally its the other way round.
It seems like ages ago when we last had some decent weather. But it wasn’t actually that long ago: May 23rd, the day the Olympic Torch Relay reached Cirencester, was very warm indeed.
That was only two months ago – and it was sunny for a few days after that. We haven’t had a massive amount of rain this week, so contrary to some reports, it certainly has not been raining non stop since April.
I have to say though… two months ago we were still in drought with a hosepipe ban in force. I wonder what happened to the person/people who first said that we were in drought? The water companies have gone very quiet since all this heavy rain and flash flooding hit the news.
The weird thing about the UK weather though. In the space of about 2 months we’ve come from being in drought with a hosepipe ban following a dry winter, bright sunshine for a couple of weeks etc. to heavy rain for a long time, a lifting of the hosepipe ban and then back to some (now welcome) sunshine.
The ten day forecast on the BBC website shows that, whilst its not going to be sunny the whole time, it will be dry with temperatures looking good… on Thursday its showing a max. temperature of 30 celcius!
Meanwhile, the countdown to our annual holiday to Greece has now started. We booked later this year, partly because we weren’t sure was happening (politically), and partly because money’s very tight now. However, we have managed to book a week in August.
So I’m now looking forward to returning to the small village of Sivota (Σύβοτα), on the Greek mainland – its located in the county of Thesprotia (Θεσπρωτία), in the North Western region of Epirus (Ήπειρος).
It’ll be a good chance to put my Greek-speaking skills in to practice again. I think my Greek’s improved a lot since the last time we were out there – perhaps helped by the fact that I no longer have regular German lessons at school/college etc.
I’m also looking forward to enjoying the Greek weather: sunshine! Temperatures have been up in the high 30s recently. The weather forecast for the nearby city of Ioannina (Ιωάννηνα) is showing that they’re expecting a little bit of rain as well as some thundery showers this week. Hopefully that means the rain will have gone by the time we get there…?
Or perhaps not…
FH.
