Spring Already?

It's very strange, nay, weird, to say but Spring seems to have already Sprung around these parts. It seems like it was only Christmas yesterday, and yet suddenly Spring seems to be here, bursting out of an overly large fake cardboard cake and shouting, "Ta dah," in it's very best and loudest voice.

The Hail on the Roundabout...

Yet the rain still comes. The wind too. And a couple of weeks ago we had Hail. Portugal being Portugal of course, with it's penchant for extreme weather phenomena, meant that it was not just any old hail. Oh no. We had hailstones the size of Garden Peas falling so hard, so fast and so intensely that on one particular roundabout that I have to navigate on the way to work every day was iced up with compacted hail. It was indeed very strange. As I approached the roundabout I could see that traffic was queuing up and thought that someone must have broken down or had an accident. As I continued down the hill, along the dual carriageway towards the roundabout I could see that there seemed to be what looked like snow piling up on the edges of the carriageway. It all seemed very reminiscent of England when the snow starts to melt and the slushy polluted black ice builds up at the kerbside. Eventually, after moving steadily along with the queuing cars I could see that the edges of the carriageway were lined with what looked like snow frogspawn, with the compacted hailstones revealing dark centres spread throughout the semi-translucent icy mass. Traversing the rather large roundabout revealed that the other side was awash with molten hail to such an extent that the inside of the three lanes wash flooded to a foot deep. I later learned that the majority of the hail had fallen overnight, and with the early morning sunrise the melt had begun, and hence caused the flooding. It was still very strange though, since the hail did seem to be confined to this one particular large roundabout.

And yet Spring is almost here. You can feel it in the air. There is a freshness and clarity to the atmosphere. The rainstorms, which although currently frequent, seem to be cleansing the air, refreshing the soil and rejuvinating dormant plant growth. Our own hedges have started to sprout new brighter, greener leaves and branches. I pointed out to my children last week, as we drove along the road, that some of the shrubs in the verges had started to sprout delicate little white flowers. The hedges that line the gardens of our neighbour's houses have started, just in a small way, to sprout their springtime purple flowers.

That said, perhaps we're just having a very mild winter. It does seem a little warmer than it did last year, and having bought some more firewood only last week, it does indeed fell like I am burning a lot less of the stuff this year, well, so far at any rate. Mustn't grumble though. I know that all along the West coastal regions of Europe have suffered some pretty intense storms this winter. Wales got hit really bad, with my old home town of Aberystwyth taking a right battering along it's seafront promenade. I heard also today that Cornwall is battening down the hatches once again in preparation for "round two" of the big swell of extreme weather coming in from the Atlantic. Down south here in Portugal of course we've had the good and bad side of the winter storms. On the bad side there has been a couple of seafront bars which quite literally have been reduced to nothing more than floor boards and insurance claims. On the up side, the surfers around here, of which there are many, are loving the big waves and the popular surfing towns are inundated with travelling surfers wanting waves to ride and with money to spend. Today I noticed that yet another brave soul, a plumber from England by the name of Andrew Cotton has joined the ranks surfers attempting to out-perform each other riding ever increasingly large waves at Nazare.

A cloudy day in Estoril, on the beach with the gulls.

For me though, I'll be glad when the rainy weather is finished. And I know my kids will be too. For them it seems that winter brings a time when we don't get to go to the park. Or the beach. Well, certainly not as much as they would like to. It's a case of grabbing each break between the rain and wind that you can, taking the initiative and getting out there and doing something. You might have to put a couple of extra layers on, especially as the wind down on the beaches can be harsh and biting, but with a little preparation, and a swift decisive mindset, one can still find the occasional moment to enjoy the currently empty beaches, sharing them only with the multitudinous seagulls and the occasional dog-walker.