A friend of mine recently returned from a well-earned holiday which she spent in Portugal. And from what I was able to gather she had a lovely time, lapping up the sun and lying on the beach, wrapped in a beach towel, watching bronzed young men eager to impress onlookers with a display of their effortlessly acquired beach volleyball skills. Did I say wrapped in a beach towel?
Well, according to her account of what she experienced on holiday, it wasn’t the little mites, bless them, kicking up sand and jumping around excitedly as they built sandcastles and dug their warrens of trenches, or the athletic posers feigning a game of beach volleyball that bothered her most while she tried to unwind and enjoy her trip down to the beach – it was the wind.
Because although my friend was well aware of the fact that the holiday resorts along stretches of the Atlantic coast are recognised as not always being the calmest of places, she had not counted on ending up lying on a beach cocooned in a large Terry towel if she were to have any chance of braving the gusty squalls and strong winds that were whipping up the sand, whirling sunshades around and tearing at the billowing windbreakers.
So how come nobody has come up with the idea of not only checking out water temperatures and the air temperatures at holiday resorts but also wind speeds – preferably before somebody ends up stuck on a beach in the middle of a medium-sized sandstorm? Read More