Sunshine strategies.

The sunshine seems to have brought out the best in the British sportsmen. First there’s Andy Murray winning Wimbledon in three straight sets. It would be churlish to say that he didn’t have to beat Rafa Nadal this time but, hey, I’ve said it anyway. And then Chris Froome has been wearing the Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France for a few days now. All good stuff! I wonder if he’ll still have that jersey at the end of the day. 

I can’t say I would have enjoyed playing tennis in the heat and certainly not cycling up the Pyrenees. Each to his own, however. 

I’ve spent some time standing on the balcony – in between going down to swim and cool off in the pool – catching the breeze and incidentally watching the traffic go by. I think I’ve noticed another odd fact about Spanish drivers. In the UK, when you learn to drive you are trained, as it were, to drive fairly close to the kerb. If the road is wide enough to allow two lanes of traffic in one direction, you still drive in the inner lane until you need to pull out to go round something. Now, the road I observe from our balcony has two lanes in each direction, that’s in addition to the parking spaces. Even when it’s quiet the majority of drivers stick to the outer lane, close to the line in the middle of the road. Maybe it’s because of the propensity for double parking here; the drivers want to avoid having to pull out round an illegally parked vehicle. I have absolutely no idea whether this is the truth of the matter or not. 

Getting back to the subject of the heat wave, we have been resorting to desperate measures to keep the flat cool. Everyone moans about it down at the pool. Ladies declare that they really don’t want to cook. The blinds are black and consequently absorb heat so the rooms facing south heat up at a furious rate of knots, even when you batten down the hatches. So we stuck kitchen foil over the windows on the principle that if it works for car windscreens it should work for bedroom windows. And to a certain extent it does. 
 
One result of the heat wave is that we have been going a bit stir crazy so yesterday evening we took ourselves out and walked up to A Guía. En route we spotted some fine graffiti but felt that the street should be called Heat Street not Beat Street.

Mostly,though, we walked in shady places and through the trees. 

The view over the bay was quite spectacular in the evening sunshine. 



 We stuck our noses in the chapel up there as the door was open for once. One of the smallest old ladies I have ever seen was just finishing off the cleaning and growled at us, “Voy a cerrar (I’m about to lock it up)”. Very Christian, I thought. So we stuck our noses out again and the rest of us followed. 

I went to bed with windows and blinds open last night: beautifully cool. And then at about five this morning I had to get up and close things as the wind had got up and for the first time in ages I felt TOO cool. 

Well, the first time since Phil left the air-conditioning on in the hotel in Sanxenxo. 

Today, the wind continues, keeping it cool enough to walk around. However, don’t stand around too long waiting to cross the road. You just might melt!