It's Looking Grim!!

It's looking grim on a couple of fronts!  

The first being the weather ... the forecast was spot on, it is raining heavily, the wind has got up and it is bordering on cold!

We were going to walk into Collioure today but it is just too wet - and we remembered that our well-loved cagoules aren't waterproof any more!  Never mind, our timing is pretty good as we are leaving tomorrow, so whilst Elaine has had her cooking head today on I have packed up the van and bikes so we are ready for the off first thing tomorrow.

It looks a bit different from yesterday!

Here is the forecast for today and the next few days ...

Just noticed its in Fahrenheit....never mind you get the drift. 

Tomorrow we will head inland towards Andorra, where it will get a lot colder!  We will then head back towards the coast of Spain, somewhere below Barcelona, where hopefully the temps will rise again.  We have no exact plans on which route we will take or how long it will take us - we will just do the usual, aim for a spot avoiding tollways.

Which brings us to the second part of things looking grim ... the state of the Australian economy and how it effects us.

I'm certainly no expert on the economy and its workings but I do know that Australia's economy has been booming the last few years.  Australia didn't go into recession when the rest of the world did. It has been doing well because of the mining sector, selling everything it dug out of the ground to Asia, mainly China.

Now, of course, China is slowing which has had an immediate impact on the mining industry and Australia.

My problem is reading the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper!  Everyday I read it there is more doom and gloom with the Australian share market crashing and the Aussie dollar plummeting!  According to some reports Australia may well go into recession this year.

It affects us because all our assets, including our property, are in Australia so whereas we were getting up to 68p for one Aussie dollar back in 2012, we are now getting 45p!  The interest rate on savings has also dropped and unfortunately it doesn't look like any turnaround is going to happen in the foreseeable future.

The flip side of course is that we have had it good for a long time and at the moment we are well and truly living the dream.  We will continue to do so for as long as we possibly can.

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