The weekend has gone from a wet day yesterday to what must be the hottest day so far this year today - a real scorcher which kept getting hotter as the day wore on. By five in the afternoon, walking out of the house (which has maintained a steady 20°C) felt like walking into an oven! The weather app claims today's high to have been 25°C, which I think is conservative to say the least, but the app expects tomorrow to be almost 30°C!
But back to yesterday: the morning started cool with a bit of cloud, and as normal we were out supermarket shopping by half eight in the morning, Helen having already been up to exercise.
Before 10am we were driving back up the hill fully laden and stopping in the bar in the village for a quick cappuccino before going home to unload.
We emptied the car of one cargo and loaded it with another (the dog) to head up to the quarry track so that Reggie could have a good run around off the lead. With having not had the car available for most of the week, it's been a while since we managed to give Reggie a good run around off the lead, so he enjoyed the walk and stopped off for his usual bark at the small cascading stream along the way.
We got home just before midday and made a nice summery quinoa salad for our lunch, washed down with a glass of chilled white wine. Al fresco dining was off the menu today though, as the rain was threatening to make an appearance, so we made do with an indoor lunch. After clearing away the dishes we headed over to Montecatini Terme to do a little shopping - nothing exciting, just dog supplies and materials for constructing some new fly screens for our windows. If we keep getting temperatures like this we'll be cooking indoors of an evening if we can't let the cool night breeze blow through the house.
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful after that (I'm not sure the morning qualifies as eventful, but it's all we've got): we got home and made one of the five fly screens between us before settling down to an early dinner and a movie before retiring and looking forward to something resembling a Sunday lie-in.
The lie-in wasn't to be: the cats kicked off at half six - nothing unusual there, so I clambered out of bed and fed them as quietly as I could before climbing back under the covers and trying to get back to sleep to the sound of birdsong. As we'd had the window open all night for the first time in many months, I subsequently couldn't tell if I was listening to Reggie having a whine downstairs, or whether it was just birdsong. I lay there trying to discern dog from bird until Helen roused and confirmed it was indeed Reggie. I got up, let the cats out first and gave them time to reach safety, before letting Reggie out. He charged out, emptied his bladder and sniffed around where Lucca had been just moments ago, then came in for his breakfast in his new slo-bowl. We bought him the bowl, which is designed to slow down a dog's eating, yesterday and it seems to work (well, it now takes him roughly 1 minute 40 seconds to finish a meal, which is more than twice as long as it used to take him).
While I left Reggie trying to extract his breakfast from the bowl's maze with his tongue, I went back to bed, but by now Helen was awake and got up to keep an eye on the dog while I lay there drifting in out of consciousness to the sound of birds and barking for another hour.
Once we were both up we started our day with breakfast on the patio. The weather was truly beautiful this morning, already feeling hot before 9am - a complete contrast to yesterday - and we had a leisurely start with cereal, coffee, fruit juice and yoghurt on the patio before piling into the car with Reggie and heading Sorana-bound to try and walk a bit more of the track to the lost village of Lignana.
We drove as far up the CAI 54 walking route as possible before leaving the car at the roadside and heading up a gravel track where we passed dozens of beehives. You could hear the bees from many metres away, and see them swarming around the collection of hives. This wasn't the first depository of hives we would see today - it seems the apiarists are out in force at the moment, making use of the lovely, sweet-smelling acacia blossom while it lasts.
We walked the familiar track until the turn-off onto a narrow footpath signed Ligana then strode uphill for about 40 five minutes while it felt like someone was turning the heat up. Thankfully, the wood was quite dense so were afforded plenty of tree cover, but that didn't stop the profusion of sweat that drenched my t-shirt.
We eventually reached a point where the wood opened up a little, with stone strewn unnaturally around the place, and this was where we lost the footpath. We spent a good 15 minutes trying to find the continuation of the path while Reggie charged around the place with his tongue at full stretch out of the side of his mouth.
We eventually gave up, feeling quite frustrated as it seemed we both secretly wanted to make it all the way to Lignana today, but we quickly gave in knowing that today's walk would already be twice as long as anything Reggie has done so far, and we were aware of the fact that the temperature was making it harder going for all of us. Typically, just as we turned back, we spotted the path continuing on up the hill! We considered following it briefly but decided that a return to the car was probably for the best, Reggie having now drained his water bottle.
By the time we got back to the car it was getting on for midday and as we pulled up at the house the church bells chimed noon so it was straight to lunch for us all. Reggie's lunch was served up in another new purchase: a rubber ball with a small hole that he has to roll around to get the food out of. This was the second time he'd used this and so far so good - it keeps him engaged for quite some time as he pounces on it and rolls it around. Fortunately it seems too large for him to chew, so it may stay intact too.
Lunch was another leisurely affair, this time outdoors, after which we dressed in work clothes and set about making the remaining 4 fly screens as the temperature continued to climb.
By 4pm we had made and fitted all but one of the fly screens, having run out of mesh for the final one, so Helen took the hedge trimmers out onto the terraces for an hour while I started the blog in the cool indoors.
An hours later, my wife walked in looking like she'd showered fully clothed, and after slugging back a glass of water she headed for a shower - cold or not, she didn't care.
When she reappeared, we sat on the patio with a beer as the sun crept down in the sky but the temperature seemed to refuse to dip with it. At 5.30pm it was still scorching. Nothing a cold beer can't handle though, and while I finished this very post Helen went about dead-heading the irises that had gone over and were looking a little unsightly.
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