We're surrounded by people complaining about the cold, and keep reminding them that they are actually living on a narrow strip of habitable terrain on the southern fringe of a frozen continent. They don't believe us.
On Friday night we stayed at a France Passion site at a winery just outside Mèze. The proprietor was an unhappy bundle of clothes behind the counter. When we told her she was living in the warmest part of Europe she turned dreamy and started wistfully listing places that might be warmer “... Málaga, Palermo …. maybe Corsica...”. We cheered her up a little by buying a lot of her products.
It was chilly in the mountains - some frost and ice on the puddles in the morning, but bright and sunny during the day. The 6kg refill of propane that lasted us a month in Blaye in September has gone in a week (but we have not been using mains power much, so that gas has heated our water, space heating as well as cooking).
Yesterday on the beach between Sète and Agde the sky and the sea were both a deep blue, and the air was so clear we could see the tops of yachts' masts peeking over the horizon. It wasn't sun-bathing weather but one fleece was enough. We were glad we were there rather than Porthcawl. Scooby had his first paddle in the Mediterranean, but we didn't join him.
In the supermarket everyone was wrapped up warmly, including several elderly ladies in full length Muscovite fur coats and hats. When we called into Mr Bricolage for some chemical toilet fluid, it was obvious that everything to do with heating and insulation was selling well. The man in front of me had his arms full of pipe lagging, the man behind was cradling an electric radiator, and in the carpark a member of staff was assembling a gas fired radiant heater to show a shivering dark skinned couple how it worked.
They don't seem to be at all prepared for this weather. I no longer feel that I'm the nesh one! I suppose it's partly because we're from further north, but also I think living in the van has toughened us up a bit.
To put it in perspective, for anyone who's reading this later on; this is the week when Gatwick airport was closed by snow, commuters in South East England were stranded on trains for ten hours, it was minus 20°C in Scotland, minus 17°C in Builth Wells and minus 6°C in Swansea In France the weather took up half the national news, the main A75 motorway between Clemont-Ferrand and Montpellier was closed by snow, and the Rhône Departement opened its leisure centres to house rough sleepers.
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