Too hot!

I was starting to think The Plague Years might be dead, but no, here I am again, after a four-day break. 

Summer has arrived in southwestern Ontario. The temperature right now - at 6pm - is 29C. It's too hot to go out for an afternoon walk, although an early evening bike ride might be in order.

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I've not been a complete sloth the last few days. I continue to work on my photos, continue to do my daily exercise - 5K run one day, 4K fast-walk the next. I'm trying to get out earlier in the day, which I'm finding difficult - my early morning are fairly slothful. Today, it was reported to be 21C when I went out at about 10; it felt quite a bit hotter.

I continue to read. I have three books on the go. 

The Siege by Arturo Pérez-Reverte is an historical crime thriller set in Cádiz in the south of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars (1811). The Imperial Army has overrun most of Spain and imprisoned its monarch, but Cádiz is holding out, under siege. In the midst of daily bombardments from French positions that are more an annoyance than anything, Comisario Rogelio Tízon is baffled by a series of gruesome murders that seem somehow to be linked to the bombardment.

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald is a book of lovely short essays by the nature writer who's last book, H is for Hawk, was a modest best-seller and won a couple of awards. 

And lastly, D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose, the audiobook I'm listening to while exercising. It's the story of the women, mostly of French birth and background,  who were trained by a British intelligence agency during WWII and dropped into France to help organize, train, supply and fight alongside the resistance in advance of the D-Day landing in June 1944. Rose focuses on three of them. It reads almost like a thriller, but the historical research appears to be meticulous. Unfortunately, the author is the reader, and she's not very good at it. I now have the ebook, so I might end up reading some of it.

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I did go out for a walk a few days ago before my hiatus from The Plague Years and took a few not-very-inspired pictures.

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Because the hot weather is keeping me inside in the afternoon, most of the photography has been revisiting shots from winter 2017, which we spent in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and Málaga on the south coast of mainland Spain. It's still early February and Karen and I seem to be full of energy for walks and drives and sight-seeing in Lanzarote. 

One day, we went for a walk along the sea from our village of Isla Mujeres through volcanic landscapes. The next, we drove across the island to Caleta de Famara, a surfer town with a lovely wide beach.

Another day, we drove 30 minutes up our side of the island to a fabulous cactus garden where I had a great time photographing the weird and wonderful plants.

Yet another day, we visited a cave formed by lava flows from one of the island's many volcanoes. This eerily-lit pool with its perfect reflections of the surrounding walls was one of the photographic highlights.

At Orzola, at the north end of the island, we watched hang gliders riding the thermals from a cliff overlooking wild beaches. Pictures of the hang gliders not that interesting but some good ones of Karen on the beach.

It seems we drove somewhere almost every day to go for a walk or see a village. This one was taken on a cliff walk just down the coast from our village.

Uh, yeah, guess-who again. It's alright, Caitlin arrives in a few days to relieve her mother of posing chores.