... -7 this morning when we went to take the children to school

The point is that most expats tend to compare the most favourable coastal areas of Spain, with the worst areas of the UK.

Taking Spain as a whole the contrast is not so great, in fact many parts of Spain have had more snow than the UK in recent years.

I imagine if ppl previously living in the UK had a choice, they might have chosen the soft South-West or even the Scilly isles as against living in a cold Northern city or amongst the Scottish mountains.

I have always found a far greater contrast between mainland Spain and the much more favourable Canaries, than between mainland Spain and the UK.

Well, yeah but you didn't include the south atlantic coastline, so I thought I would.

My climatic preferences are such that I would take the Cádiz province over any part of the UK, winter or summer.

I would agree with that, the best times to visit Spain...when the spring flowers are something else and the autumn that extends the warm weather just that bit longer...to be truthful I do not mind the clear cold weather as long as it is warm and cozy inside, what I do not like is dark cloudy days and the short winter days, you get that in both countries.. roll on the 21st.

Yeah, but there is still a massive difference. The dark cloudy days you hate are very common in UK summers. I have seen Augusts where the sun made so little showing, we were lighting fires at night.

UK weather where we were (Cambs) was completely vile. In the last 5 summers we were there, there were only 15 or so summer days when the sun shone all day.

Forget about the winter - the last few years we were living in the U.K. (on the south coast in one of the warmest areas in the U.K.) we had terrible summers - very few warm sunny days. And as for further north in the U.K. - we have visited relatives in August and they had their central heating on! In Spain, certainly on the Costa Blanca where we live, at least you are guaranteed some decent summer weather.

Karma on its way for that. I think a lot of people are in denial about the UK weather. Some because they don't want to accept that the UK has anything other than 'perfect' weather, and others because they actually don't look at the weather accurately.

I got so fed up with people telling me I exaggerated, I started keeping a weather diary, so I could demonstrate what I said was for real. Even I was amazed by how bad it was.

I noticed that if the sun shone for more than 5 minutes, people would all say 'Isn't it a lovely day?' No, no, no, no. It is a shit day, grey, wet and miserable, and the sun has shone for precisely half an hour.

On the other hand, given that the weather is so reliably crap, half an hour's sun actually defined a good day.

That is just so depressing.

I get more perfect sunny days here in Autumn than I did all year long in the UK.

Dropped to 10c at the moment, bloody frozen.

Yeah, us too. How I envy the UK with their warm, sunny weather......

No one will ever convince me that August in Spain is better than August in the UK.
The weather may be variable but at least it's not unbearable.

.....and snug as a bug in a rug, in their lovely, warm, cosy, fully carpeted, purpose designed, double glazed, well insulated, centrally heated homes, with proper English pubs just around the corner.

It has it's compensations, especially when there's not too much sunbathing and swimming going on down on the Costas right now, and most Spanish houses can leave much to be desired, when the temps drop down towards single figures

Yes same here inland in Alora, with that north wind coming at us it is bloody cold at only 10c here, last week it was 22c every day!

Being inland it's a few degrees cooler in winter and hotter in summer than on the coast, the way to cope with both is to do as the locals do especially in summer, have siestas and eat much later and most important in the summer.....don't be so British...stay out of the sun!
In winter we go outside to warm up in the daytime and have a cosy log burner in the evenings, in the summer heat we go inside where it's cooler and put the air conditioning on.

It may not be the perfect climate all year round, but no way would I want to go back to those endless grey and miserable days in the UK even with central heating, I'd much rather wear more layers of clothing!

And isn't it just wonderful here in Spain that we can say to family and friends.....we'll have a BBQ three weeks on Sunday.....and we can almost guarantee that the sun will shine?

Maybe not very wise to count your chickens untill they're BBQd.

ooh yes, it was so cold here last night that I had to go to the extraordinary lengths of putting the gas fire on medium setting instead of the usual low, it was hell.

In fact the outside temperature when we got up this morning (at 9.30 am, we're not early risers) was only 4C. But it's a nice clear sunny day, we will warm up by going for a 5km walk to the coast and reward ourselves with lunch by the sea. Thus undoing all the good work of the exercise, of course.

We are certainly going to see some rain over the weekend according to the forecasts, but looks as though it will not be as heavy as was being predicted earlier in the week. May see some snow as well - but only on top of the mountains visible from my roof terrace, and it can stay there! Quite pretty when observed from that distance.