I came home from work in July to the heat wave of 2013 and these pages show our cruising in the second half of July and the start of August. A heat wave had come to Northern Europe and Britain and we basked in blue skies and hot weather, glorious.

This strange creature spent the day inside our wheelhouse and then pulled itself out of its skin and flew away. 2013 was also a good year for bugs.

We were glad when our new roof fan arrived as we have a problem on Waterdog getting air to circulate inside during a hot spell. We carefully marked up the roof and set to with drill and jigsaw.

This bronze statue is in the park near the boat in Charleville-Mezieres and it used to be 2 ploughmen and 2 horses pulling the plough but the Germans melted the rest down in the war to make gun barrels. The lone ploughman is still quite striking in a bigger than life sort of way.