The UK Met Office received a lot of flak for predicting a ‘barbecue’ summer, with many people deciding to ’staycation’ in the UK rather than go abroad.

It’s true, there hasn’t been a great summer so far, and now people are cancelling their stay-at-home plans and panic travelling to the costas.

But the weather is now improving and I think this is a cunning plan on the part of car-loving weather predictors.

This sudden exodus is freeing up the more interesting roads, in particular of caravans.

So, well done Met Office. Do you think you can pull the same trick next year?

Today, we’re leaving the chilly British weather for Dubai for four days. This is good because I haven’t actually had a proper full day off work since New Years Day – even reasonably free weekends sees me having to do something, usually at some weird hour.

So looking forward to it enormously.

Apparently it’s not snowing there, but it is at Heathrow, so perhaps we’ll not be going at all…

The journey home wasn’t as bad as I thought. 

We ignored the normal motorway-all-the-way-down route and instead headed toward the Humber Bridge, then on to Lincoln and only hitting motorways at the A1(M) and M11.

We hit a few torrential rain moments but otherwise was dry and traffic-free.

The Humber Bridge was particularly cool. Never seen it before. 

Now home… and a day off before returning to work

Had been a splendid week off, in Wales and here in the North York Moors, but now heading home.

Unfortunately, we’re heading south through the storm heading north, so who knows how long it will take. Hopefully it will take no more than five hours.

We’re on holiday next week, leaving tonight. It’s going to be a British holiday, partly in Snowdonia and partly in the North York Moors.

Of course, this means it’s going to rain constantly

But we do get to be away from cities and congestion, have a wander around some very pretty countryside and maybe even get a bit fitter.

The roads are meant to be quite good too.