Rode Heath

It's been another lovely sunny day again but with quite a pleasant breeze that stopped it being too hot to work the locks. We did 11 locks today, making a total of 126 so far this year and 698 since we built the boat 2½years ago.
There's been a lot of maintenance and repair work carried out on the locks on 'heart-break hill' over the last few years and the locks are much easier to work than they used to be. One of the pair of locks just passed Red Bull service centre is currently being fully refurbished.

The canal passes through beautiful farmland and there are cherry and apple trees in full blossom everywhere.

We moored at Rode Heath early this afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon fishing (over 40, mostly gudgeon) and reading.  A pair of swans have built their nest right in the winding hole which made it a bit tricky for us to turn round ready for the return trip on Monday.

It's now thundering and has gone very muggy,  looks like we're going to have a storm this evening. We certainly need the rain, the ground on Rode Heath Rise is so dry it's crazed and cracking.