TG Escapes Blog
Shelter from the Midday Sun
Oak before ash, in for a splash. Ash before oak, in for a soak. So goes the old wives’ tale and the fact that, this spring, our oaks burst into leaf many weeks before our ash would seem to add some weight to the theory. So far, this summer has been one of the hottest since records began a little over a century ago. June was lovely, July was the eighth warmest since 1910, and Met Office forecasts suggest August is going to be pretty nice too (albeit with a few more showers than we have been used to the last couple of months).
On this point, I would like to add a word of caution. Generally speaking, our family’s outdoor leisure plans are generally a good indication of when a spot of bad weather might be expected. Our first camping trip of the summer holidays coincided with a gargantuan thunderstorm in Dorset the weekend of 18th July and our summer pool party took place in the next bout of stormy weather on 2nd August. Not that it stopped us enjoying ourselves, thanks to some good waterproofs, lots of cake and plenty of wine! Before I move back onto the subject of sunny days, I feel I should warn anyone reading this that we are camping again from 15th to 18th August, in Wales.
While I sit here bashing away at my keyboard, the sun is shining gloriously and steadily climbing to its midday zenith. Again, in my inimitable contra-indicatory fashion, I will be mowing my lawn at the hottest part of the day when what I would love to be doing instead is sitting in a Garden Escape, with the doors wide open and a breeze whispering softly, sipping a nice cool drink and counting butterflies.
The experts these days seem unable to agree about whether exposure to the British midday sun is a good thing (to boost our vitamin D levels) or a bad thing (sunburn and melanomas) but, regardless of medical advice, it really can be just too uncomfortably hot to be out in the full glare of the sun at its highest. Yet it seems such a waste of wonderful weather to simply retreat indoors. So being inside, outside, bathed in brilliant sunlight but shielded from the full force of the sun’s rays seems like a pretty good idea to me. After all, we can’t all take a leaf out of The Kinks book, no matter how appealing they make it sound to be:
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