[bluebellnutter]

Of course if we're going to talk weather charts most actually show the heat dissipating beyond the end of next week (possibly the week after) and by the time the August bank holiday rolls around it might be a lot fresher and possibly wet. But that doesn't sell papers.

[Abernathy]

Yeah. MONTHS. Fucking MONTHS, it'll be. We'll be sweating fucking COBS on Xmas fucking Eve.

They always have to take it too far, don't they ?

[cycloon]

Of course if we're going to talk weather charts most actually show the heat dissipating beyond the end of next week (possibly the week after) and by the time the August bank holiday rolls around it might be a lot fresher and possibly wet. But that doesn't sell papers.

Please Jesus, let this be true.

[Kreuzberger]

I met a really nice Norwegian guy a couple of weeks ago.

We have this ride sharing thing here, Blablacar, and we had lent our own car out to a good friend who wanted to take the kids on holiday. So, needing to get down to Bayern, and having no need for a mota once there, I booked a Blabla.

On a good day, it's a five hour schlep and, because of the random road works and hailstorms, we were a good six-plus hours on the road.

If you are of that disposition, Blabla can be great. It is almost always quicker than the train, certainly quicker and less hassle than flying and you get to meet all manner of people. Ships in the night, as it were.

Young Andreas is from the north of Norway, way up and in the eastern uplands across towards the border with Sweden. He is the first of the family to have gone to uni and is now a software developer, living in Gothenburg, Sweden. That is impressive stuff in its own right but there is, quite naturally, a visceral pull to the frozen north where the clan have been sheep farming for generations.

Quite why Norwegian lamb should be a new concept to me is another matter entirely but, apparently, this meat is the stuff of legends. As soon as the beasts are born, they are off scampering up the thawed hillsides munching wild flowers and the lush green vegetation which is irrigated by melt water in this pristine outcrop of Europe, close to the Arctic Circle. That makes sense. The meat must be incomparably good.

But things are looking bleak. Day after day of high-20s and often higher temperatures are blitzing the balance out of everything that sustains these communities. The pastures are already turning to hay, the streams are running dry and the lambs don't have the energy to do much more than seek shelter under the few trees that dot the landscape. The harvest is failing and the outlook for the autumn market sales is bleaker than bleak.

Worryingly, the local bank manager is nowhere to be seen.

Of course, Norway has more layers of sovereign wealth fund fat than you can shake a stick at and they can ameliorate a season of climactic anomalies. But what about next year? And the year after?

[Safe_Timber_Man]

It feels wrong to 'Like' that post. I found it fascinating, though. I'd love to visit some Scandinavian countries soon. Spend Christmas in a log cabin.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I take your point, Kreuz, because I see similar in Normandy, where both animal and plant ecologies are changing, beyond the well-attested earlier springs (and lambings). I don't recall all the details (I'd been subjected to some home-made Calva) but there are issues where lambs are being born - in France - where the necessary food plants are out of whack. But on the other hand, two crops of maize, and hay being harvested early and twice a year gives some leeway.

I haven't been to see the moutons at the Baie de Mont St Michel lately, but I imagine they are in a similar position.

[Kreuzberger]

It feels wrong to 'Like' that post. I found it fascinating, though. I'd love to visit some Scandinavian countries soon. Spend Christmas in a log cabin.

Thank you. I'll not pretend that I didn't mean this post to be at least a little thought provoking. The price of Christmas cheer is Noway though? It would be financially prudent to develop a raging, albeit temporary, cocaine habit.

[Kreuzberger]

I take your point, Kreuz, because I see similar in Normandy, where both animal and plant ecologies are changing, beyond the well-attested earlier springs (and lambings). I don't recall all the details (I'd been subjected to some home-made Calva) but there are issues where lambs are being born - in France - where the necessary food plants are out of whack. But on the other hand, two crops of maize, and hay being harvested early and twice a year gives some leeway.

I haven't been to see the moutons at the Baie de Mont St Michel lately, but I imagine they are in a similar position.

Yep. I have the benefit of going hillwalking with the Kreuzbergerin's father. He has just clipped 84 full years and knows that area around Berchtesgaden like the back of his hand. He has never lived anywhere else.

He points down the valley as we sit with our 11am pints (and by Christ they are vital after all that scampering) and shows me the crop rotations that have all been redesignated in recent years due to two harvests of mais rather than the one which had been hauled from this soil for centuries.

It's truly bonkers.