Boring stuff
Archived posts from this Category
Wednesday, 8th December 2010
Posted by Judith on 08 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
The wind seems to have followed us home, because it was howling here today. All the trees were a writhing mass, and the wind was so warm! I learnt a new Catalan word today: ‘fogony’. It literally means burner, but I assume that in the context of weather and wind it means föhn. I’ve never seen föhn forecast in our part of the Pyrenees, but it can certainly happen.
We were hoping to be able to take a few hours off to go flying, but with the strong wind it was clear from early on that that was a non-starter. On the positive side, we have ploughed through the accounts at such a pace that we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. No skiing tomorrow… forecast is far too warm and it’ll be far to slushy to be enjoyable. 22°C here today…
Tuesday, 7th December 2010
Posted by Judith on 08 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
We got a phone call from the plumber this morning to say he’d got our message and he was coming round this morning to fix our heating. Phew.
We managed to get through a day of doing company accounts without tears and tantrums, which must be a first.
Otherwise, we’ve had a strong, but very warm, southerly wind here. Top temperature in Olot was 21°C today, which was nice, but rubbish for the ski resorts, who had a minimum temperature of 5°C. We watched the UK lunchtime news and saw the havoc caused by the weather in Scotland, where they reported -12°C at lunchtime in the Borders. Amazing to think there’s a difference of 33°C between here and there.
Monday, 8th November 2010
Posted by Judith on 08 Nov 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
What an interesting weather day today was. Not particularly here, where it was cloudy in the morning, then bright sunshine from lunchtime, but far too windy to even think about flying. But the synoptic was amazing. All of Europe, from Portugal to the Greek/Turkish border, had crap weather, with the exception of Sweden, where is was sunny and (I think) flyable. Must be some kind of freak occurrence, Sweden being the only flyable place on the whole continent in November.
And just to prove it, I had a peek at the satpic and indeed, there was a big blue hole punched by the high pressure over them, while the rest of Europe had disappeared under a blanket of cloud.
I’m very tempted to write to PGForum and ask the Swedes what it was like…
Tuesday, 12th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 13 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff, Walking
Ok, so we seem to be having the worst weather in Europe. But at least we have kind friends who keep us up to date with how nice it is in the UK and who helpfully point out that we left too soon and should have stuck around longer.
After a night of hard rain, it actually stopped at 11am and brightened up a touch. Not enough to go flying (even if it had got flyable, our gliders would have got soaked and muddy), but we decided to go for a walk instead. We did the ’round the cliff’ walk to check out how much water there is in the river and to check out the damage caused by the deluge. Quite a few trees have come down, but nothing like a few years ago when the water level nearly came to the bottom of the cliff and flooded the allotments on the other bank.
In the hope of finding an agreeable forecast, I had a hunt around the internet trying to suss out when the next non-work day would be. I’ve decided to abandon the local RASP, which had this as the local forecast for today:
Complete and utter codswallop! Berga was marked as yellow, with a high thermal updraft strength. Except the webcam showed the mountains behind Berga were clagged in most of the day. And you can see why:
The only really accurate forecast was the synoptic:
And here’s some actual photos from our village. Thermals? My arse!
Sunday, 10th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 10 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
More stunningly crap weather. Cloudbase was about 30′ AOR (above our roof) [18.33pm correction: orographic cloud has just formed on the cliff, so cloudbase is below the house!] for most of the day and it’s been non-stop rain. The river below the house is a swollen brown mass of water, full of debris carried down from the Pyrenees.
In order to look at a more reliable long term forecast, Geoff had a nose around the internet and managed to find a RASP for the Pyrenees. Not sure about reliable though… it’s out of date already! We’ve also dug out a whole number of wind sites. It all seemed a good idea at the time, but now I’m not so sure. The obsessive weather watching is a summer XC flying activity. I actually quite enjoyed our take-it-as-it-comes attitude to flying over winter and I think I might be able to use my time in other ways. Ok, off to delete them all from my favourites again…
So more work today. Made a great start on the next LMSC newsletter and can see the end of the tunnel with the proper RHADS webcast. I’d rather be flying though…
Thurday, 30th September 2010
Posted by Judith on 02 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
We always like the weather to be rubbish when we leave Britain, just because it confirms our decision on the timing to leave the UK. Unfortunately, we had to drive to Dover under the perfect XC sky. I kept my eyes firmly on the road…
The boat trip was uneventful as usual, getting round Paris was a pain as always and we slept in a motorway service station in the front seats of the van as ever. I did get a cramped six hours, interrupted every hour or so by the need to shift position, either because a limb had gone to sleep, my head had lolled forward or I was drooling – still, for an insomniac, that’s a lot of sleep! In the morning we went into the service station for coffee and croissants and as I went to brush my teeth in the ladies, I was confronted by a man pointing a rather large gun at me. I must have been really groggy because rather than being particularly concerned, I walked back out to check the sign on the door to confirm that I hadn’t accidentally wandered into the gents. Luckily, he was army, rather than a psychopath, so I just got on with brushing my teeth. The gents were being cleaned…
Wednesday, 29th September 2010
Posted by Judith on 02 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Boring stuff
We finally managed to get everything packed and I set about the task of getting all the boxes, gliders, bits and pieces in the van, while Geoff was busy with meetings. I always like the challenge of packing efficiently and we’re always hopeful that one day we’ll either have so little stuff, or pack so efficiently, that there will be enough room for one of us to sleep in the back. I was nearly there, but not quite. Last on were the bikes, for which we had bought a fancy new rack. Only problem was, our number plate isn’t centrally located, so the bikes had to go to the side and protruded too much. We shuffled the rack back into the middle, only to find that the lights were obscured. We took the wheels off, but then the number plate still wasn’t visible. In the end, we went for the most practical solution… repack the van, put the bikes inside, leave the new rack in the UK and sleep in the front seats as usual!
Hours later than expected we finally hit the road, driving down to our first stop in the Cotswolds to say good-bye to Geoff’s family.
And Wayne has taken the plunge, and is now living in our house over the winter.