Straight to Winter, no Autumn!

Daughter back from Bangor for a few days, changed trains at Newport and WhatsApp’d me to complain about the cold. \It is bloody freezing here with this horrible light drizzle.

Already planned as Man in the High Castle binge with the kids tomorrow while the Mrs goes out on a Halloween 10K. Lebkuchen on offer at Tescos, they won’t last the day.

I have barely been out of the house today, a trip to the chemist to collect a prescription for new support socks, only to be greeted with a surprise large bundle of other supplies. With that done I have been in the house watching the temperature display failing to move upward all day. I had my fill of drizzle yesterday, I was a little slow taking the dogs out for a walk, the very light drizzle turned into something far wetter and organised for dog walk 1 and was really organised for dog walk 2, so I only managed about 2 miles in the morning. The afternoon was brighter and almost warm, so with a bit of striding out with them I managed a shade over 3 miles, however nothing today and a doubtful distance tomorrow. The dogs are at home over the weekend and back with us on Sunday night.

Travelling down the East Coast is correct – last night we had hailstones and heavy rain – put paid to all but the hardiest early firework idiots – I thought this year the firework festivities would be limited to the long weekend, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It seems not!!

Again this morning has been cold and drizzly, but some real heavy hailstone showers. just nipped down to the diy shed and bought some paint for the en suite, some of the back roads were flooded in parts, well a good 6″ of water.

A crisp and sunny 10° in Wembley at the moment.

Spent the night outside under canvas, for the last time this year (well, the last DofE group this year) as the DofE season ends at the end of October. Thankfully, no hyptothermic cadets and three groups managing to pass the Bronze award! (All 15 were checked for hats and gloves before leaving!)

Thankfully no rain, as if it had been cold and wet, the supervisors probably would have had to have pulled the plug. Unlike my Lowland Expedition Leaders assessment in Edale at the start of the month, where it rained on the Friday night as I arrived and in to Saturday morning and I woke up to ice on the inside of my tent on the Sunday…

This year must be close to the 50th anniversary of the last time I holidayed under canvas. The family were off to Ireland with a 4-man ridge tent, stopping off at West Wales to visit sister at Bangor Uni. We set up atop a cliff and settled down for the night.

It hammered down and soon the tent was waterlogged, the ground sheet sitting on a flow of surface water, the sleeping bags soaked. I vowed never again, Mum and Dad agreed so Ireland camping became Ireland B&B!!

dwynnehugh wrote:

I feel so sorry for you soft southerners – ‘ooop north’ where I live we have T shirts and shorts, generally we start to consider a ‘cardi’ in mid January dependent upon the volume of snow when we need to go out!

At least this soft southerner can get 4G on his phone…..   ?

My car had a very heavy frost on it this morning, it’s in the shade from about 3pm to 9am at this time of year. The front of the house can be freezing cold and the back baking hot.

Last time I had a car (before my recent Swift’s) I lived in a shared house, that had a car port which was just big enough to get my car, my mates and his Vespa in when parked carefully. That made a hell of a difference.

My problem would be getting a cover on and off, 2 years ago it would have been no problem, now with my arthritis giving me more and more issues it would kill me.

I’ll just pour boiling water over the windscreen. ?