It’s Bank Holiday Monday and I should be climbing Helvellyn along with the hordes of holidaymakers and ramblers who are in the region to make the ascent of this popular Lakeland mountain. Instead I’m camped out in a tea house in Keswick trying to stay dry, with hordes of holidaymakers and ramblers!

Whilst tucking into a steak pie and cursing the English summer that never was, I came across today’s Weatherwatch in The Guardian. It points out that the holiday month of August has always been prone to extremes, with high rainfall chief among them and quotes from the weather diary of Sir John Wittewronge of Rothamsted, Hertfordshire. In his August 1685 records Sir John notes that his apricots and peaches by reason of the “unseasonable wett weather ripened very ill” and a good number of the peaches “rotted and fel off.” The year “was a long and wett unreasonable harvest as I ever remember.” His entry for today, August 25, reads: “A cloudy day with frequent showers of rain, in the evening thunder and lightening and rain to some purpose from five to past seven continually and after by intervals til 9.”

Thinking about it, the unpredictability of the British climate has informed much of the character of English art: stormy northern skies conjured an entirely different atmosphere and type of landscape than the bright, blue clarity of southern Europe. The moisture which steams out of Turner’s canvases as well, or that makes Constable’s so uncannily clear and fresh.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Charles II, who had been brought up in France, but regarded the English climate as more attractive, saying “he lik’d…that Country best, which might be enjoy’d the most Hours of the Day, and the most Days in the Year, which he was sure to be done in England more than in any country whatsoever.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 4:17 pm and is filed under TRIP LOGISTICS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.