On any given day, lots of cyclists mention the weather. This is natural, because we are out there in it, and it has a big effect on everything that happens in the day. On a given day, it is easy to note that maybe it was freezing in the morning, windy in the afternoon, and rained all evening. But how about for a whole tour? How can we summarize what happened with the weather? It certainly could be helpful information, maybe explaining why overall the riders had a good or a bad time, or answering a question about what it is like to ride in a certain region in a certain season.

Through our trip, each day Dodie recorded in a notebook what the temperature was like, whether it rained, and so forth. But how to summarize that?

I realized that each day was either ok for riding (allowing for the season, and given that we could put clothes on or off) or that despite all that something about it could be adverse. Adverse weather is either too hot or too cold and rainy. That's the simple version, because first off we did not note wind speed and direction, and also we never encountered the condition "too hot and rainy" - not likely in Europe.

So a day's weather could be summarized as "OK, no real issue" or else as too hot or too cold/rainy.

Given that, it turned out that almost 50% (only 50%?) of our days were OK. Then we get the big feature of this particular summer in northern Europe - a drought and heat wave. Consequently, almost a third of our days were TOO HOT. Fortunately, we got cooled off by about a fifth of the days, which were TOO COLD/RAINY.

The three kinds of days came in runs or clumps as the calendar moved along, with the drought or hotter days coming in August and September as we were either in the drought stricken north or the generally warmer south. When we hit France, though, in late September and October, we were blessed with good and/or cooler weather.

In the chart below, the too hot days are shown by a bar sticking up. The too cool/rainy days are shown by a bar sticking down. No bar = no problem. So the chart shows the pattern over the 92 days we were out there.

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It's a little unexpected that a Summer tour should show up with weather issues. But it's really the heat that was the most noteworthy. With heat, all you can do is carry lots of water, and maybe start earlier in the day and hide out in the hottest hours. Cold and rain in Summer is not really a problem. It will never try to kill you, like it can in Winter. We did see some cyclists on some days in full rain pants and booties, but we took none of this along. Like we say, in Summer getting soaked is not such a tragedy.

(Oh, p.s. - re-reading this, with it's claim that getting soaked is not a tragedy, in fairness I should note that we used rain (or even threat of rain) as an excuse not to pitch the tent. I guess we did not have the benefit of our own selves, months later, writing "Hey, what's the problem!")