Sunny skies...a trip down memory lane...

These winter months are cold and mostly wet and sometimes I get a hankering for a warmer climate, know the feeling?  Somewhere warm, where the sun shines most days, where you can get suntan when you drive with your window down and your arm is resting on the door....I used to have a right arm that was a few shades darker than the left, just because I'd rest my arm on the door, especially if I was driving to pick the girls up from school....

I've lived in a few beautiful places in my lifetime, one of them being Cape Town, with its beautiful majestic mountain which is flat on top (hence it's name!) and the view is AWESOME!  I've also climbed this mountain, (a few years ago now!) it's a tough climb, but once you're at the top, it's the most wonderful feeling!

One of my homes had this view....

and when the cloud covers the mountain, it seems to blanket the whole city in mystery...

an aerial view of the city

and then I've lived inland, as we say, right in the middle of South Africa, in a small town with no coastline, very hot summers, interspersed with weekly rainstorms and  dry, parched winters.

The university....check those skies!

A long dusty road in another town...must be winter, still blue skies - in winter the temperatures might start out at 0 Celcius, and by lunchtime, be up to 20C...this can vary though and with climate change, winters are getting colder and summers increasingly hotter with temperatures recorded this past summer of 39 Celcius which is not normally heard of in our town.

The town where we lived also hosts international athletes, who come from all over the world to train in our town, as the altitude of 1400m is one of the best for training, it's not too high and the weather is warm.

and then I've lived in the tiny picturesque town of Parys - named after the beautiful Paris, because of the river that runs through it...

a misty morning alongside the Vaal River

or river rafting...

Sunset on the Vaal River

I'll leave you with the last picture, a reminder that winter will soon end, then spring will appear in all it's floral glory, and finally summer with daisy chains, the smell of newly mowed grass and melting ice creams!  

It won't be long now....in the meantime, enjoy mother winter and all she has to offer, misty wet mornings, hot cocoa, a brisk walk in a frost covered park and the comforting darkness of an early sunset...

xxx