Hot and dry

Early this morning Gavin's cousin arrived from South Africa to spend the weekend with us - yes it's a long way to come for a weekend but he is cycling in the Prudential Ride London Cycle Race on Sunday and he then needs to get back to work so he cannot stay for long. I have always watched it every year as it comes through our village and this year I will actually know someone cycling in it!

The route is the one used for the Olympic Games back in 2012, with the infamous Box Hill, and every year it causes much annoyance to the local residents as the roads are all closed all day and some people cannot get in and out of their homes by car. On Sunday Thomas is going off on another residential pre-university engineering course and we won't be able to get on to the motorway from our house so on Saturday night we will have to park the car quite a way down a road away from the cycle route and then walk there on Sunday so we can get out.

Its still hot and ever so dry, I suppose perfect for harvesting. I got really excited just now as the sky started to darken, I could hear thunder and I could actually smell rain - but not a drop fell here, and the clouds now seem to have blown away.

Thomas thoroughly enjoyed his engineering design course at Manchester this week, and he has a few days at home before going off on the next one, at Cranfield University, which seems to specialise in all aspects of areospace. He certainly is getting a taste for what engineering is all about and which aspect of it he likes best.