(Kind of) next up: Madrid
Every now and again, more or less annually, Michaela spends a weekend with Mum in Lowestoft while I go off somewhere in Europe with my long time buddy Adrian for a boys’ weekend of beer and football. So this weekend we’re off to Madrid to see Atletico Madrid versus Sevilla, 2nd against 6th.
The plan was, as we often have on these trips, to take in two matches, the second on this occasion being Rayo Vallecano versus Valladolid, but unfortunately all La Liga fixtures kick off at the same time this weekend so that part of our plans got scuppered.
It’ll be good to feel the heat of the sun, given recent developments with English weather. After an Easter which hit record highs, it’s turned strangely cold and for over a week now temperatures have been well below average for the time of year. Maximums of around 11 or 12 are the norm, whereas this same day last year, a public holiday in the UK, we were bathing in lovely early summer sunshine and topping up tans.
Rape fields in Kent 
Peacock Butterfly
It’s nothing like that today as we take a walk around the Kent countryside, around the villages of St Nicholas-at-Wade and Sarre, the cold wind giving a March feel rather than early May. Migrating swallows are arriving, probably thinking they’ve made a mistake, insects and butterflies hide from the breeze, and the bright yellows of the fields of rape seem incongruous in the cold air.
The thermometer isn’t reaching 15, and apparently isn’t going to, for a while yet. Madrid is a rather different prospect.
Leaving the cold weather in England 
Heading for the warm sunshine of Spain
