rain...rain...more rain

You see, this is the kind of day that really makes me loathe English weather. Yeah, yeah, I know April showers and all that, but give me a break. All day and evening sheets of rain have been driven horizontal by a wind gusting hard enough to bend trees sideways. If you have to go outside, you're drenched in seconds. The rain hits your skin like ice needles, runs across your cheeks and down your neck. It hits your body like marbles that explode on impact, soaking your clothes and weighing you down. Instantly.

How do serious walkers do days like this? I need to know, because if I was cuddled up in some cozy b&b halfway up a mountain and looked out the window to a horizon obscured by rain, fog and low cloud, I can't imagine what it would take to drag me outside. Does that make me a fair weather walker? Maybe. And if so, then I'm definitely in the wrong country, because, let's face it, the English countryside is practically synonymous with rich, well-watered greenery. Frankly, it's the weather that brought me to September as the ideal month for a hike - neither too hot nor too cold, and usually the most reliable in terms of dry days.

I think we're getting spoiled here, to be honest. I haven't actually done any research on this, but I'm pretty sure the past two years have been unusually dry in Britain. For which I am unspeakably grateful. My dream climate is to be found in California. I have never experienced a SoCal July, but I sure do appreciate the Januarys there.

I'm not a native Brit and where I come from the weather is much more dramatic than here and, in most cases, even worse than here - hotter, colder, snowier, wetter and windier. Where I come from, the weather helps to define the culture. Where I come from the weather can kill you. So I can't help but be weather-obsessed, it was born into my genetic make up along with a love of boats and a preference between cod tongues and cheeks.

I am frequently accused of being a right old wuss, coming from that kind of climate and then having the gall to complain about British weather. But, hey, I came here to get away from all that. That's my excuse, anyway.

Lucky me, today I took the dogs out at 7am and was back about an hour before armageddon commenced. But what do I do when I'm halfway up that mountain?