I am preparing for my holiday in France with my parents, should be going away tomorrow and coming back on Monday 23 July. The region in question is near the Massif Central, more or less in central France, though will be spending the two weeks of the holiday in slightly different places. Most likely I will be spending much of the holiday lazing around, playing table tennis etc, consuming crusty French-stick bread and ice-creams. My holidays in France in the last three years were all very enjoyable so hopefully this one won't be an exception!

Meanwhile the weather here in Cleadon has been uncharacteristically exciting- until last month I hadn't recorded more than three thunder-days in a month, yet today makes it four on the trot! Just as remarkably, I have heard thunder on 8 days out of the last 22. I don't like dull unsettled weather, but I'll take these convective "sunshine and showers" days anytime.

That said, while sunshine amounts have been okay here over 1-4 July, it appears that this emphatically hasn't been the case over much of the rest of Britain- although to be fair we did fare particularly badly sunshine wise during June, so it's merely redressing the balance a bit!

The weather outlook for Cleadon for the next two weeks is dreadful- the exciting weather set to end tomorrow, with lots of dull wet Atlantic dross to come. Although it looks pretty unsettled for central France too, I'll be hoping that we miss most of the dull wet dross and get sun, showers and thunderstorms instead.