Contrary to Popular Belief…

…not all Radio 4 weather forecasts end ‘And finally, Scotland.’ Sometimes they end ‘And finally, Scotland and Northern Ireland.’

Actually it’s generally bad news when they start with Scotland. That’s usually when the weather here is going to be particularly and interestingly unpleasant. I had completely lost the habit of listening to the forecast in London because it didn’t really matter what it was going to be like as I was only going to be on the bike or walking for five or ten minutes at a time. But here, where almost all of our recreational activities are outdoors, it does matter, although there’s not much we can do about it. When we had visitors the other weekend we ended up visiting an old lead mine on the grounds that it couldn’t be raining underground.*

The other day, I did listen to the forecast, and then I forgot all about it until I was at the furthest point out of a lunchtime walk and it started to rain. The weather had gone from hot and sultry to interestingly cloudy to really quite threatening and although I had had the sense to wear a jacket, I had not anything particularly waterproof, no hat and no umbrella. Which is when the words of the forecaster came back to me. ‘Unfortunately,’ he had said, going into what I thought was unnecessary detail at the time, ‘because of the light winds today, any rain you do get is likely to be heavy and quite prolonged.’ Sometimes those bastards at the weather centre get it absolutely spot on. All the way back his words were running around in my head in a mocking refrain. I got back in full-on drowned rat mode and had to dry myself out on the Rayburn.

This weekend we have been trying another tactic. Instead of waiting for it to stop raining, we tried simply ignoring the rain and going for a walk anyway. How wet can you get? We thought. Answer: very wet indeed. Any suggestions on how to deal with this – other than ‘move to Spain’ – warmly, if damply, welcomed.

*We were wrong