A heat wave!

I took this photograph in Shrewsbury this morning: both she and I were feeling the heat.

I had caught the train there yesterday, overdressed, and with my rucksack loaded down with copies of The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer. This morning, after my talk about the book to the Shropshire Family History Society, I still had a nearly full rucksack, too heavy to carry very far in the warm weather which has suddenly come upon us.

And in my room in the Old Bell, where I was billeted for the night, I cursed my first mosquito of the year.

Croyde

The heat wave continues - thank God, being that we are on holiday! I’ve surfed today at Croyde Bay, virtually the only one in the sea without a wetsuit. We went there once before for this purpose, a few years ago - 1997 in fact, en route for Cornwall. Today's surf wasn’t brilliant, and the tide was far out, but how lovely to taste salt, and to feel the sand beneath the feet and the warmth of the sea breeze! Not too many people there either, at this time of year. Even so, the lanes are a nightmare.