Rain Rain Go Away

There are more words for rain in Scotland than there are days in a Scottish summer. This morning I'd describe it as stoatin', which for those with a more refined vocabulary is descriptive of the act of hitting a horizontal surface and bouncing back up in the air. It looks like we will have to venture out in it at some point but hopefully by then it will just be smirrin'.

The wettest town or city in Scotland last year was Edinburgh, which apparently saw almost 1.5 metres of rainfall, but that's nothing when compared to the western Highlands which can see up to 4.5 metres annually. If you live around there you must get fair drookit on a regular basis. Scotland does get a bit of a bad reputation for rainfall, especially on the BBC National weather forecast, when even if rain is restricted to a light shower in the Outer Hebrides, the forecaster will conclude with the words "and rain in Scotland". So in the interests of fairness, I'd like to report that Mawsynram in India is the wettest place on Earth receiving nearly 12 metres of rainfall every year.

I felt the need to refresh my knowledge of the science of rainfall measuring. I seem to remember at school it involved collecting together a bucket, a funnel of known diameter and a measuring cylinder. Then all you had to do was sit and wait for it to rain. So 1 mm of rainfall means there is 1 litre of water falling for every square metre of ground. Edinburgh covers approximately 260 km², so that last year it's many rooftops had to contend with 400 billion litres, or about 150,000 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's a good job the city is built on 7 hills.

It had stopped raining by midday, but it looked like there was more to come, so we headed to for Rheged, an all weather, all year round visitor centre, situated within Britain’s largest grass covered building. Rheged is named after one of the kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"), the Brittonic-speaking region of what is now Northern England and southern Scotland, during the post-Roman era and Early Middle Ages. There we found a soft play for the wee ones and a make your own decoupage animals for the older girls and their Nannie.

Got to watch the 7s rugby final before heading out to the children's disco. I love children's discos. The are all of a similar format, loud cheesy music, flashing lights, an empty dance floor, children wandering around aimlessly with balloons or a Glo-stick and a load of adults taking advantage of the distraction to get in a few rounds.Read more