Every single year people say 'This summer has been worse than last year'
I don't believe this. I just think people forget what the weather was like last year or the year before
Yes, it’s not the fact of wet U.K. weather being miserable that puzzles me (in total agreement with that one); it’s the annual chorus of surprise about it. As I said upthread, more often than not we have lousy weather in August. When it’s not raining during the summer holidays it’s usually humid and muggy - you rarely get a period of blue skies and nice dry heat.
In the past, if we wanted a U.K. break we’d always book for June, September or totally out of season, so we have zero expectations about the weather anyway. As it happened, our June holiday this year also turned out to be a washout, but that hasn’t been the case in the past. As of next year we’ll be tied to school holidays with DD, so I really hope we can travel overseas again by then.
But crap August weather is not a new phenomenon; I vividly remember the summer of 2004, in my first job post-uni, staring out of the window of my London office at the constant stair rod-like rain. Or the 2012 London Olympics, which was amazing in all aspects apart from the utterly rubbish weather. August as the main ‘summer holiday’ season is really quite bad timing.