I don’t feel that we’ve talked enough about the weather so far. Ok, we did with everyone we met. The holiday makers say what an awful or unfortunate luck with the weather they had. The locals say that the winter has been harsh and long this year and everything is by four weeks late. The newspaper said that the snow falling in the Highlands at the end of April didn’t suggest a good May. A local man said that there hasn’t been Spring yet. The sheep are hitting fences in a bit to break through and get to the grass on his tennis court. Overall everyone agrees that this year has been unusual compare to normally and May have not lived to everyones expectations.
Being here for four weeks we learnt that it’s no point to dwell on the fact that this year’s extraordinary circumstances put halt on our project so far, we just hope it won’t be doom and gloom in June, too. On the other hand we’re quite enjoying this unsettled weather.
Yes, no longer we read the overall outlook of highs moving towards Azors and Icelandic lows moving over the north west of Scotland. We just check the wind whether it is paddleable or not. And give a little thought whether we have a headland to tackle or not as the swell here is spectacular.
In terms of other weather features, we became fond of this unsettled times. We have sunny days, and if we could shed the hats and gloves at least during one of them, it would be great.
We have nights with windstorms during which someone for some reason keeps standing next to our tent and throws buckets of gravel (according to the sound) on it. We have days with both sun and rain followed by rainbows.
We have rainy days which add adverse feeling to some of the places where we’ve look for night.
On some rainy paddles I resumed to wearing a helmet to protect my face and head from the sharp rain razors. And recently we reached the top. We set off in the morning and when the cloud lifted, the peaks of the highest hills on Harris were covered in white. Here we go, summer half term in Britain and I finally could see the long missed snow.