Summer of ’26

Some of you may be old enough to remember the Summer of ‘76. 1976 that is of course. Last century. I had just become a teenager and the summer holidays were full of fun and hope of good things to come. I remember having our school photograph taken just before the end of term, shortly after I’d reached the ripe old age of 13. I stood on the raked benches scrunched up against my schoolmates in our summer uniform of grey pleated skirt, pale blue short-sleeved Aertex shirt, long white socks and tan school sandals (yes, I know, sounds awful - but it was the 70s after all!). The thought running through my head as we smiled for the camera, a moment in time immortalised on film, was how little of life I actually had left - just a few years of being a teenager followed by adulthood and then the decades would slip seamlessly past: my twenties, my thirties, forties and fifties and before you knew it I’d be old and life would practically be over. When you have a head full of young hopes and dreams where the world is your oyster, this can be a scary thought. Now, at 63, despite so many of those hopes and dreams never coming to fruition, I simply see ageing as a privilege. Too many haven’t finished the path I started on with them. Too many taken in their youth or in their prime. I am grateful for every day I have on earth and for every day which may, or may not, follow. Life is in part a lottery, in part what you choose to make of it. I have failed in some aspects of life, thrived in others. I’m as curious now as I was then. (Curious in both senses of the term, some would say!) Yet whatever I have achieved or not achieved with my life, I know I am grateful for it and for all my blessings. Moreover, I’m equally grateful for its many challenges from which I’m still learning and growing as a person. 

But now a few facts and figures for you. The persistently dry summer of 1976, one which I remember for its complaining adults, hosepipe bans, brown lawns, standpipes, daily visits to the open air swimming pool at the school across the way from our house, and a seemingly endless six weeks of holiday, has been pushed into 7th place as the warmest summer on record, according to the UK Met Office. Apparently the average mean temperature this summer was 16.5 degrees Celsius and, compared to the dry heat of 1976, summer of ‘26 was notable for consistent waves of intense heat and high humidity brought in from the Atlantic. Now, as some of you may know, my husband and I crossed the Atlantic in a 46ft sailing boat last autumn with the friends who own the boat (a challenge I still haven’t finished writing about, but I promise I’ll return to). Compared to when my husband and the Skipper/boat owner did the same thing two years earlier, the trade winds were weak, but at times we had strong westerlies to contend with. The significance of this is that the La Niña effect was neutralised and became an El Niño event whereby the already overheated oceans have warm water currents from the Pacific Ocean being channelled westwards by the westerly winds rather than the other way around. As the Atlantic Ocean reached higher than normal temperatures the air above it further heated up and that heat and humidity was then pushed towards the European continent. A perfect storm if you like. 

Now, while a southerner born and bred, I have lived in the grey, wet and windy northwest of England for the past 23 years. So in fact, when you get a summer like this one, you get quite excited. Let’s just say it makes a welcome change from the usual damp, cool and depressing ones. However, it comes at a cost - both to humans, society and nature. This summer was marked by consistent and ferocious forest fires such as the one in the New Forest, those in Wales, those on the northern peat and heather moors, and those in the pine forests of southwest France and the forests of northern Spain. Nearly 700,000 hectares of land were consumed by the fires in the UK and the EU combined. 

Having recently returned from six weeks in south west France, I can tell you that we arrived on the day the first big fires took hold. As we drove south from Bordeaux we saw smoke in the air to the west and the subsequent days were full of fear and chaos as residents and holiday makers were evacuated from their homes and campsites, many houses and businesses lost to the ferocious fires fuelled by the westerly winds, the resin of the pine trees and the tinder dry undergrowth. Horses, dogs, cats and wild animals were seen fleeing uncontrollably from the flames. A dog turned up at our local restaurant clearly lost and confused, scanning every car that passed for its owners, possibly lost in a hasty and anxious evacuation. I never found out what became of the poor creature.  

As the summer progressed, the extreme heatwave subsided a little and the smell of hot pines, like you get in a sauna, slowly diminished. The air was no longer infused with smoke from the fires and the news stories quietly died out with the flames, despite the ever-present risk of new ones developing at any time. Eventually came some overnight downpours, before a massive summer storm with terrifying lighting strikes dumped six inches of rain in one day. 

It was never entirely clear how the fires started. Some were human error (some, no doubt, human stupidity) and the forest tracks were closed to access. Garden machinery and barbecues were forbidden. Some village summer fêtes were cancelled either out of respect for those less fortunate, or due to the continued risk of fire with large crowds and parched land. As ever, the heroes were the firefighters who spent hour after exhausting hour fighting the flames from every angle, saving lives and habitats at the risk to their own, whether in France, England, Spain or elsewhere. 

Here in the north west of England, some people deliberately started fires on the moors, one notable case for the thrill of filming it for social media. And so my final reflection on the Summer of ‘26 is this: I know that the world I live in now is very different to the one I was living in in 1976; the 70s weren’t without their own problems for sure, but my 13 year old self, contemplating life during the taking of that school photograph, could never have imagined a digital reality where likes on a thing called a social media account seem these days to hold more value than the fragile beauty of Mother Earth and the myriad life forms she nurtures and supports, our own included. It seems that humanity still has a lot to learn - and needs to start learning fast before it’s all too late.