Whitethroat...

I was on my way to the Lakes, though I stayed near Lancaster last night. Having discovered one tyre had a slow puncture, I wanted to be first in the queue this morning at the Kwit Fit workshop in town. 

I took a stroll along the Glasson Dock branch of the Lancaster Canal. It didn’t look to have much boat traffic, with water lilies in flower, and flags and rushes along the water margins. A buzzard soared and skylarks sang. A heron lifted off laboriously, and, from the top of a bush, a whitethroat sang its scratchy summer song… loud and determinedly unmelodic. The grassy towpath was a pleasure to walk along, because someone had kept the grass cut with a gang-mower, leaving a cut swathe, six or seven feet wide, for walkers. It’s hot… even at 9 o’clock in the morning, and the temperature is set to keep rising.

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal near Barnoldswick...