Whitstable

Last week we experienced a proper heatwave here in the UK. It was really hot, and we had five days of consistent above 30 degrees C, two of which were the weekend.

On sweltering nights with neither air conditioning or the electric fan, I could only rely on a piece of paper and fanned myself to sleep, whilst K went to sleep on the sofa in the living room as it was cooler there. Boy was it hot! We do have an electric fan back home (remember, we are still renting) but it's lost somewhere, probably in the shed and we didn't think it would be that warm to warrant us going back to search for it. The tube was very stinky with no air conditioning as you can imagine and everyone's just sitting there perspiring. Not ideal, but thankfully weather temperatures such as this is uncommon and lasts for a few days, although it has to be mentioned that the UK has not seen a consecutive 5 days of >30 deg C weather since June 1976! Anyway, as I'm typing now on a Saturday morning, temperatures have cooled back down to twenties so all good.

Last Saturday was really sunny and Rachel suggested going to Whitstable to spend the day. Whitstable is a nice coastal village in Kent, about an hour's drive from where we are and K agreed to drive us there. The drive took 30min longer than usual as you can imagine everyone was heading in that direction. We found a parking lot in the heat when we arrived, and came out of the car squinting our eyes lol. Boy, this heat!

We walked toward the beach, though to be honest the beach isn't great but the entire coastal vibe was. People were turning red on the beach, eating ice cream, eating fresh oysters, fish n chips... while kids ran around, some topless... in fact we saw quite a few men topless too, walking around the village.

Wouldn't mind living in one of these colourful houses by the sea

A pub by the beach

We found a french restaurant for lunch and managed to get their last table. The food was good, and the iced cold drinks even better. We took a long leisurely lunch before walking around a bit more through the town. Many of the shops were the same as what I remembered them to be (I think K and I came here maybe 3 years ago with the Geesons?) and soon we decided to rest at a cafe, have a quick drink, before going back to the car. By that time the car was boiling under the heat and it genuinely felt like we were back in Singapore with seats that could burn our bums.