The Best Time to Visit the U.K

If you live in the southwest, such as in Tucson Arizona where I live, I would base the best time to go to the U.K. by the weather. Personally, I would love to escape the summer heat here, to go into a much cooler climate. Our hot months here in Tucson are always from April - October. That's a full 6 months compared to the Northeastern states, here in the United States, which consider their summer months to be from the end of June until Labor Day, in early September - basically only 2 months. Although it is said that June and July are our hottest months here in Tucson with an average temperature of 98 degrees, I have seen it get as hot as 118 degrees. It is not unusual for us to be between 100 - 114 degrees during any one of our hot months. Who wouldn't want to escape that kind of heat? It's funny that if we hear it is going to be in the 90s on one of our "summer" days, we feel like we're having a cooling trend. Ha! People from the east coast always ask me, "How do you stand the heat there?" I remember when we first thought about moving to Tucson, people from here would always say, "It's a dry heat." We even have postcards, t-shirts, license plates, etc. that say, "It's a dry heat." Yea, right! The postcards and t-shirts have a skeleton along with the saying which is more like it. Okay, not having a lot of humidity does help a lot, but when it's over 100 degrees out, it's HOT. It's too hot to touch the steering wheel of your car after you get back into it after awhile, during the day. Those car windshield shade companies must do well because of us Tucsonans. Even though it takes awhile for the air condition to cool down the interior of the car, I can't imagine not having air condition at all. Sometimes I see people driving around during our hot months with their windows open and I don't know how they do it. Maybe they have little, battery-operated fans on their dashboards, which I don't think would be of much help - if any at all. Hand-held water bottles with the fans attached are big sellers here. And even though it hardly rains here, umbrellas are big sellers here too because people use them to shade themselves from the sun. Skin cancer is of much concern here. It's no wonder the "Snowbirds"(people who escape their cold states and go to warmer ones) who come here disappear in April. I can tell when they have left because our traffic is so much less. I hear that in Europe they don't even sell cars with air condition. Usually the highest degrees they get there all year long is in the low 70s, in July and August. In June, one of our hottest months here in Tucson, the degrees in Europe is usually in the high 60s. Nice, huh? Too nice. A great reason to go there. Today is September 27th and my daughter is in Scotland right now. I get so jealous every time I talk to her and she tells me how cold it is there. Scotland is even a couple of degrees cooler than London each month. My daughter already wore her winter coat there and today here in Tucson, we are going to be 104 degrees. Ugh! I would love to start saving money to go to Europe next summer for a vacation, to escape our hot weather here in Tucson Arizona. It's something to look forward to.