The wind has finally died down. Its arrival coincided with Julian’s departure on the 26th of February. Before that, we’d had the occasional windy day, but on Friday the 26th it blew up a hooley and carried on blowing until last night. Two full weeks of a cold north wind. There have been mild half days, still calm mornings that lulled me into the false idea that the wind had finally abated. But by the afternoon on those days, it was blowing a Force 6, gusting to Force 7.
Last Monday was the worst, and I had to get across the choppy river from Portugal to Spain in my little rubber dinghy. Someone invited me to join them for coffee, but I took one look at the river and thought to myself ‘I just want to get across now’. I didn’t want to have time to think about it. There were high Force 7 gusts that day, and by the time I made it across the river, I was soaked through and shaky. I picked the girls up from school and we returned to Carina, and stayed home for the rest of the day.