Euro Journal, News & Events, Updates

The Morning Cuppa: Weather

Posted on August 16, 2024

Saturday, 17 August 2024

4 days until kick-off. Day of.

Departure day draws close. It’s not just a bit of a joy to have a look at the Google 7 Day Forecast and realise my travel and return dates are included in the forecast. The weather looks good enough. True, it’s not Costa Brava or Bloomfield Hills in August. But to this old man anything north of 70f I’ll have it. For the moment just a dash of rain rolls through on the Friday.

There’s an old lighthouse on the end of Folkestone’s Pier. AKA the Harbour Arm. Painted onto its facade is: ‘Weather is a Third to Place and Time’. This is never more fitting than to Folkestone. If you catch it right the weather is a delight. You smile morning. Noon. And Night. Get it wrong and it’s bracing winds and pelting rain. No fun at all. My first visit to Euro Militaire in 2003 witnessed spectacularly hot weather which while making for all manner of antics in shorts in the balmy evening weather, it also made the Leas Cliff Hall rather smelly and the bedrooms in the hotel a sauna. I didn’t witness temperatures that hot again until 2016 which saw a summer so scorching hot it hadn’t been witnessed since the summer of 194o during the battle of Britain.

I’ve also experienced Euro and Folkestone when the weather made me want to turn round and return to Spain. The first Euro Miniatures Expo in 2017 was cold and dreary with pelting rain both Saturday and Sunday. Same was true for December of 2022 when I had my family to London for the Christmas holidays. We then went down to Folkestone for a few days and saw some of the wildest winds and rain along the Channel imaginable. We stayed in the View Hotel that late December trip between Christmas and New Year and had a front row seat to wild storms in the English Channel from our Leas facing hotel rooms. Although glorious to watch nature’s fury it was awful to be out in.

We’re expecting better weather in August. But I double check the weather on the day before we fly in case there is any drastic changes to the forecast requiring me a change to my packing.

That’s all for today.

As always, the journey is everything.