No matter which weather app we consult the forecast for the next ten days looks terrible. In the immediate future the whole of Spain is going to be engulfed by storm Celia, then it will become unseasonably chilly and showery across all of Murcia and Castille La Mancha.
I don't quite know at what point once unassuming anti-cyclones and deep lows became anthropomorphic. Was there an international conference of meteorologists a few years ago when they all decided to make bad weather more 'relatable' by giving their more disappointing predictions cute names? Does this happen everywhere, in Togo, Suriname and Bora Bora, or is it only in America and Europe where the public are treated like toddlers when it comes to breaking bad news about the weather? Anyway Celia is heading our way and there is nothing we can do to stop her.
When we tried to make sense of the forecast in Spanish by using Google translate we were faced with conditions that have no equivalent in English - for example - mud-rain. I think we do get this phenomena at home, but we don't have a specific term for it. I think it's when you find a dusting of sand on your car roof after a rain shower, in other words rain with lots of dust particles in it - mud-rain. Anyway apparently there is going to be lots of it over the next few days, along with strong winds and lower than average temperatures. None of this is good news. What we needed was a spell of warmish sunny weather before we have to start heading north in earnest.
The weather today has been especially peculiar. By mid-morning the wind gusts touched 100kph, we quickly stored away all our outside furniture. There was the odd clunk on the van roof as small branches were torn from the tree overhanging the pitch.
Then the wind dropped and it became dead still, the nearby hills wreathed in a dull granular mist, sepia coloured; slowly the light strengthened but it didn't brighten, instead everything began to glow in an otherworldly yellow light; absolute stillness, no birdsong, no dogs barking; the only time I have experienced anything similar was during a total eclipse.
As we stood outside of the van looking somewhat nonplussed a Spanish woman passed by, "Maybe it's the end of the world" she suggested.
It felt oppressive. After a couple of hours of staring out the window at the silent apocalypse we decided to go for a walk, the same route as yesterday. It was difficult to comprehend the difference, it didn't look like a different season, it looked like a different planet.
It makes no sense to spend much time here. We might leave on Wednesday and start to head north slowly, perhaps staying in places for a couple of days then moving on until we hit a sunny patch and can have the iconic Mediterranean moment that keeps eluding us.
Next day we woke-up and decided we were being over-optimistic. The light was still strange, not quite so yellow, more sepia coloured, covering all the surfaces inside and out in a layer of fine, slightly gritty dust. El Tiempo reported that the whole of the eastern half of the peninsula is covered in dust blown in from the Sahara.
When it rains tomorrow we will discover exactly what the Spanish mean by mud-rain. We also learned that that there is a Spanish word for the Saharan dust smog - calima.
Having looked more carefully at the forecast, maybe heading northeast doesn't make any sense at all. Backtracking towards Seville via Malaga looks the better option, but that takes us further from Calais and would mean more of a mad dash home towards the end of our trip. Better that than being trapped inside the van for days watching the yellow smog and thinking about Prufrock. Costa del Sol then Seville, it's a plan.
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