natjtan I’m trying to convince myself at the moment, to life in the moment with August weather. The weather is perfect right now. 31C, not cloudy, the water’s perfect, the evenings are warm.
A trip the Barcelona Zoo as usual last week had me a little nostalgic. I grew up in the countyside. My parents had 16.5 acres or 66775.5m2 which consisted of 2 fields rented out to a farmer for sheep, 400m from the road, trees for me to climb, a huge garden to play in. I loved it after dinner when I was allowed to play outside again. The zoo at the moment has the same light, feel in the air. I like going last hour as there aren’t many people around so it feels like I have a tropical garden myself. Every now and then I’m transported in random seconds back to being a kid playing out late on summer evenings. Or in Spain afternoons. It took while to understand why the evening’s in Spain start at 21.00. Anything before is the afternoon.
The bitter sweet is the light now is changing as the days get shorter. Summer’s just over 6 weeks in and about 7 weeks it’s autumn fall falling into winter. I’ll happily live in summer temps. Although climate change is hitting. My underwater OlympusTG6 camera has a thermostat and some photos from around this time last year were still on the SD card. The temperature details are only on the playback not when uploaded. The water last year was around 24-25C now it’s 27-28C. I’m not getting as cold swimming and didn’t put it together until seeing difference checking photo info.
Back in May the second half of May the temperature was higher than usual. More like mid June onwards. It’s been like that before every few years but this time it was straight from 24C to about 30C. The water back in May hadn’t warmed up, but I was in the water ASAP as I’d been waiting all year round to be back in my underwater world. Though the Mediterranean side of Spain is known for it’s long summer season it’s only really for 2.5 months you can snorkel without freezing unless midday. Summer really is short.
Anyway, adventures were still to be had even if the places were the same old. Sometimes it’s the things that happen, people you talk to on regular days that make the adventures rather than the places you go to.
Moon day before May’s full Flower Moon
Barcelona’s full of cool graffiti. Some is 💩 and others are a free art gallery.
I learnt that male ducks during the summer change feather colours. They loose their royal blue colours for camouflage feathers. I was confused feeding the ducks as to where the males went in June. They looked different to females so I thought they were teenage ducks. Google said otherwise and they do look different. I also learnt female ducks can change gender. Sadly not many baby chicks made it this year, however there are a few teenage ducks based on size in Parc de la Ciutadella.
Nesting season was in.
Around the 18-19th May it got hot hot. Meerkats cooling off at 18.30ish.
May and June the city’s filled with flowers. This little garden on the corner of C/ de Pau Claris and C/ de la Diputació (outside Miin Cosmetics. Surprise!) all year round makes me smile. The city likes it’s green spots no matter how small.
The last week of May we took took a trip the Delta de L’Ebre to see the flamingos! We got lucky with the weather vs people. Summer tourist season hadn’t started leaving the beaches and trails empty! I’ll be sharing more photos soon (maybe months as I’ve still Hawai’i and Big Sur photos from 2000 pre pandemic travel to share 🫤)
More Delta de L’Ebre flamingos here!
Where the Rio/River Ebre meets the Mediterranean Sea.
Further inland away from the rice fields, songbirds took over from wetland birds filling the air with bird song. Swifts/swallows were setting up for summer residency!
A run took me down county lanes lined with farms. This field might not look much, but it smelt heavenly being entirely mint.
Heading back, stopping off to explore a cove, the hike leading off from the cove was more exciting than the cove.
Thank you for stopping by!