This is the hottest day of the year in the UK. It’s about 90 degrees where we are (32C) and there is no AC on the boat. We started out around eight this morning when the temperature was still bearable. The locks in this stretch are double wide, and the gates are heavy, so it is hard work slogging through them. They also have a tendency to swing open unprovoked, which means that you have to be on both sides of the lock at the same time to close them.

Around noon we stopped at the services at Kirby Bridge. There’s a private mooring next to them that has a lovely garden.

We both cooled off, and were ready to press on for a few more locks, but after three more we were both overheated and tired, so at two in the afternoon we decided to moor up for the day. We are entering the suburbs of Leicester, and there are not many moorings along this stretch, but we found the old landing stage for a long vanished mill, and tied up.

We are next to a picnic area that has seen some fire damage.

We have landed, apparently, in South Wigston. We walked though a park to the main shopping street. Kids in a variety of skin tones whizzed by on bikes and scooters. Paula lectured the slower moving ones on the importance of wearing helmets. It’s quite a relief to be back in a community with some racial diversity after the almost unrelieved whiteness of the folks you meet on the cut.

The campus of the South Leicestershire College is notable for its unnecessarily pointy architecture.

The main shopping street reminded me of the nondescript midlands town where I grew up.

There are no charity shops, but the working men’s club and the conservative association stare at each other across the street.

There’s a bookie, a chippie, a co-op grocery, Chinese and Indian take aways, and two tattoo parlors. Most of the adults here seem to have tattoos, perhaps the whole town is secretly an enormous biker gang. The hardware store was closed for renovations, but the new owner let us in anyway so Paula could buy some wood filler and a shelf.

Walking back through the park we saw a little asian boy with a cricket bat. His mother bowled to him, and he hooked it away to square leg. I applauded, and Paula did not lecture him on the importance of wearing a helmet because she does not know how dangerous cricket is.