The English are a resilient lot. Or are they just stupid?

This weekend was a busy one in Teesdale: a carnival, a steam show, a fair, a revolutionary boat race, an R&B festival, a fun run and a 10k run.

It was also, of course, a bank holiday, so everyone seemed to be out in numbers soaking up a fair amount of alcohol. One thing people weren't soaking up much of, however, was the sun.

In typical English fashion, the one weekend where everyone in Teesdale prayed it would be nice weather, it was pretty miserable.

I took part in the 10k Raby run on Sunday and as well as having to deal with aching legs and the humiliation of being overtaken by super-fit pensioners three times my age, I also had to battle with the wind and the drizzle.

However, mother nature saved her worst weather for Monday, when Barnard Castle held its carnival procession. Thankfully, the procession itself stayed dry - there's nothing nice about seeing a class of toddlers dressed as penguins soaked through and crying on the back of a lorry.

No sooner had the procession made its way onto the showfield, however, and the heavens opened and horizontal rain became the newest addition to the carnival. Many headed for the nearest cover, which just so happened to be the beer tent.

But English people are stubborn. This is our summer carnival, and like it or not, we will pretend it is beautiful weather even if it isn't. The queue for the ice-creams didn't go down too much, as people gathered under umbrellas to tackle their 99s.

At the car boot sale, people picked up slightly soggy second hand jigsaws to inspect them.

In the centre of the showfield was sumo wrestling, where two competitors don plastic padded fat suits and bounce each other out of the ring. As I walked past, a pair of 10-year-olds were bumping each other to oblivion, sending each other splashing across the plastic matt and into the muddy grass.

For once it made me happy that I was old enough to just stand in my waterproofs and look a bit miserable.