Does anyone remember the 2003 heatwave?

[Ursulla]

Sat here with the fan on takes me back to the summer when I bought it - it was the last one in the shop because even though it was only June it was already baking hot. I was a barmaid and it got so hot we had to hose down the barrels in the cellar. We hosed each other down as well, on slow days. It didn't matter, everyone was sweating anyway. I would walk home at 1 am when my shift finished and it was still roasting hot. I don't know if it ever got colder in any 24 hour period. Maybe at 3am, but it couldn't have been for long because the sun came up at 4.30.

When I wasn't working I sunbathed on the flat roof of my house, other neighbours were doing the same, and the parks were full of people sprawling around. It was a long, hot, languid time.

Anyone else?

Yes I was pregnant with ds2 who was due end August. I remember spending my nights sitting on the side of the bath with my feet in cold water crying because it was too hot to sleep and I was SO uncomfortable!

Very much so as I was 8.5 months pregnant with DD during it. Got sympathies off complete strangers in the street with my massive bump. Living in a south facing flat, I remember having cold showers in the middle of the night to try to cool down and sleeping under a wet sheet.

Yes. I was 8mths pregnant

Weirdly, don't remember 2003 at all. 2018, mind, I had a newborn and that whole summer was unrelentingly hoootttt...

I was in France too, on a stage in the south-east. We used to sleep on damp towels which was probably very bad for us in retrospect. We were allowed to borrow company vehicles as long as we returned them with a full tank so we used to drive up into the mountains to get into temperatures below 30°. I got the worst blistered sunburn of my life after a day swimming in the local lake.

The French media talked of nothing else. There was a full week when the temperature went above 40°C. Thousands of elderly people died and some of the families refused to come back from their holidays to deal with them. Meanwhile in the UK the Carole Caplin / Cherie Blair scandal was kicking off.

I don't remember it but I live in Ireland. I did go inter-railing in Europe that summer and while it was hot, it wasn't unbearable.

The worst summer in Ireland was 2022 as I remember. Around 30C in a new build and we have no air conditioning in work. I can't wear sandals or dresses due to where I work and it was unbearable.

Think that may have been the summer when I went to Argos to buy a fan on 1 August and they didn't have any as they switched over to their autumn/winter range for August. They've changed that now.

I was very lucky as I was spending practically all the time in a computer room on the campus which had good air conditioning, I was only leaving it for very late shopping trips.

I do. I was of high school age at that time, and remember meeting friends at the local football field and just sprawling out in the shaded parts around the edge and spraying each other with bottles of water a friend had taken from her Mum's garden.

I was 11. Just finished primary school, about to go to secondary. DM and I went on holiday to Dublin, my first time leaving Britain. We had to catch three trains to catch the ferry from Holyhead, but the heat caused the tracks to buckle so everything was delayed and we missed the boat. It was a Sunday and everything was closed, so we had to wait for the next ferry in the boiling hot terminal. We stayed in a dormitory in a hostel (wouldn't be allowed to do that with an 11-year-old nowadays), and crept in at midnight. I had a pair of bright orange combat trousers with straps dangling off the pockets, and a selection of super-sweaty polyester Hawaiian shirts. I absolutely reeked all summer.

Oh yes! I was pregnant with DS1, due mid Sept and born right at the end, all glorious 8lb 12 of him.
I was so swollen, never seen ankles (or lack of them) like it. I was working and in/out of court, the only footwear I owned that i could squeeze on were sparkly flipflops.

I remember because my friend found an out door swimming pool in the middle of nowhere. It was so cute and old fashioned.
We worked split shifts so she drive us there every lunchtime and we spent the afternoons swimming and sunbathing.
I was furious because it was boiling hot but my legs refused to change colour 😆

It was before I had kids and we were doing a job we loved, living in accommodation tied to our job, so no bills.
It was such a lovely, carefree time

We'd just moved with toddler ds out of a central London flat into a house with a south-facing garden. It was lovely, but set expectations for subsequent summers which were definitely not met. Also, sunny south-facing garden means cold north-facing sitting room, as we discovered that winter!

That was the last time I had a car without air con. I remember driving home from work on the motorway feeling that I was going to suffocate, getting home and walking through the house into the garden and turning the hose on and standing under it until I stopped feeling on fire. I got made redundant soon after so no more motorway driving which was a relief!

Was very pregnant with DS1 and planning a home water birth. We set up the pool weeks before and would just sit in it in the living room watching tv and trying to cool down.

We got married in 1976. I was teaching in a school that had been built in the 60s with one entire wall consisting of glass windows. By the time classes started at 9.00 the internal temperature was already approaching 90 degrees. So we all sat in the corridor!! Then at the end of the day I faced a 5mile walk home. Then we got married and travelled up to a northern city, with the coach travelling through field after field of brown wheat, grass etc, all looking brown and parched

2003 I was a teenager- I remember trying and failing to convince my parents to let me sleep outside!

2018 and 2022 I remember as hideous for being in a hot classroom! Schools don't have air con.

Hate the heat!

Yes! We got a lift to the airport at 5am and it was so hot already at that time.

We got home and I remember a friend saying they'd been to a wedding and it was so hot that nobody watched the first dance as they'd stood outside trying to cool down. I remember feeling gutted for the bride as we'd only got married the year before so it was fresh in my memory!

I remember 2003: my son was a baby. We were living in a new built house in Essex and it was sweltering. I kept having to dab him down with wet muslin cloths. I remember 1976 too - an endless summer of sun filled days, that’s what it felt like to me!

Another pregnant one during 2003. I had to leave the windows open and remember my house cat going out, and I was too hot and large to care until she caught her one and only catch of a young bird, that I had to chase around the lounge to catch and return to outside.

1976 I remember too. Spent a lot of time in the garden in the shade reading a book as a child as the grass turned more and more yellow..

That explains it we're in Wales. We didn't have a heatwave like this. We're a lot cooler at the moment too

My dad did that with the bathwater too. He would siphon it out of the bathroom window down a long hose and into the water butt. 1976 was ridiculous. Those cracks in the ground. I remember getting a really long bamboo cane and poking the whole thing all the way down into one crack.

yes, we drove down to the south of France in a soft top and baked the whole time, stopped at French services and showered fully clothed in their out door showers.

It was even hot when we got back to St Malo and it always rains in st Malo!

It was the summer I got married, we had the only weekend over the summer where there was a break in the weather and it rained!

I went to Newquay on a coach. Was scorching down there. Came back still scorching in Wales. Walked out of work to a swarm of ladybirds millions of them.

Danced in the garden when it started raining.