Expect cloud cover and drizzle

I've been to Skegness and Morecambe and Rochester several times but if Star Trek's Mr Scott were to transport me to one of them without warning I don't think I'd know where I were. It's exactly the same with Spanish towns and cities. Of the 50 Spanish provinces I've been to 49 of their capitals but the only ones I know well are the local ones. The one I'm missing is Palencia. In order to be a completist though I'm also short of one of the two autonomous cities on the African coast; I've been to Ceuta but not to Melilla.

Last week we went on a bit of a jaunt, 1,979 kilometres of mainly motorway plugging passing through 15 or so provinces. The plan was simple enough. Up to a village included in the 20 prettiest villages of Spain list for the first night, a village in Huesca more or less on the French border with views to the snowy Pyrenees. Next a couple of nights in Pamplona, the place where they do the bull running with the red and white clothes a la Hemingway, before a longer stay at Zarautz on the Basque coast just outside of San Sebastián. From there we'd head south, running for home with an overnight in Zaragoza. Being that way inclined we added in a couple of stops along the route and our seaside lodgings were the base from which to sally forth. Just as I've been to Skegness I've been to Pamplona, San Sebastian, Vitoria and Zaragoza before but the bits I remembered were few and far between. The smaller stops, such as, Ainsa, Alquézar, Anso and Zarautz were all new to me.

If you want to look at the snaps they're towards the end of the September album and at the beginning of the October album. Click the link words. 

As we packed the car in Culebrón, to head off, I thought it was a bit chillier than it had been so, at the last minute, I threw a pullover and a light jacket onto the back seat of the car and a pair of trainers to accompany my sandals in the boot. Anytime any of the Northern regions of Spain feature on the TV news so do the umbrellas and snow ploughs. I know this but somehow I failed to register it. Maybe, because we live in the same country I thought it unreasonable that the weather differences would be significant. The sandals remained unused but I certainly used the trainers, pullover and the jacket. It was chilly, cold at times, and it bucketed down more than once. I knew it, the weather that is, but I hadn't really acknowledged it.

With the holiday over, as we unpacked in Culebrón, I thought maybe the Northern weather had travelled with us. It was nippy. I've often argued that Spain seems to have these quite sudden changes, often calendar linked, in weather. October has arrived and the warm weather is kicking its last for the year. I wore long legged pyjamas to bed for the first time in months, the window we leave permanently open all summer is now closed and, as we watched telly the other night, I added a bit of low level aircon to raise the temperature a tad. Today I dragged the calor gas heaters from out of the garage and even hung a couple of woollies in the wardrobe. At the moment daytime temperatures are still high but the mornings and evenings are cooler. Before long the five or six months of chilly, or downright cold, Spanish Autumn, Winter and Spring will be back to remind me why it is I really, really enjoy those months when the sun beats down relentlessly.

I'm wearing a cardi

Last week it rained a lot. Even here in sunny Alicante it rains from time to time. Fortunately it didn't do what it did to lots of Southern Spain, it didn't come down in tremendous sheets, causing floods that destroyed everything in their path. It rained in a very English way. Heavy, persistent rain rarher than a tremendous downpour.

The weather has improved since then. Blue skies from time to time but generally it's been quite grey with the occasional shower. It's stayed relatively warm though - in the high 20s - but I'd be mightily disappointed if I were here on holiday especially with the cool evenings. We've closed  the workroom windows which have been open since we we wedged them that way back in June. We've also taken to closing the front and back doors to stop the cool draught passing through the house.

When I changed the duvet cover yeterday morning I considered substituting a slightly thicker and warmer quilt. The towels in the bathroom are taking hours rather than minutes to dry. There are socks in the laundry. I used the heater in the car, rather than the aircon, a couple of days ago. And the roads are full of tractors pulling trailer loads of grapes.

It's obvious really. It's still a long way from cold but it's beginning to cool down. They know about it on the telly where the season's new programmes have started. They know on the radio where the presenters are back from their summer holidays. It's September and summer finishes as August closes. The nights are drawing in. It will soon be uncomfortably cold in the house. The long, slow slope into autumn and winter has begun and it will be a long time to April when things begin to improve.