Monday 6th July 2026

Another heatwave is heading our way, apparently.

At night, already, it is warm and humid, and had to get to sleep.

Come Monday morning, I was up and dressed quick, so to check the moth trap I had left out overnight, and was rewarded with the first hawk-moth species of the year, An Elephant hawk-moth, as well as some other photogenic ones, including a Swallow-tailed moth, which was rather handsome.

They all got snapped.

Jools had a busy day planned, starting with an early morning walk, at a time when it was cool, but I was barely capable of stringing two words together. So she went alone.

I'll go later, I lied.

Jools did a tip run, went to Tesco, then took a friend to Canterbury to sort her computer problems out.

So I was home alone for about six hours.

So, I went for a walk.

My back wasn't feeling too good, but good enough to walk over the fields to Fleet House and the top of Norway Grove.

I was hunting butterflies and wild flowers, but the herbicide the famer has used now the lucerne field has wheat means that the wild flowers of the last two years are now gone.

No flowers means no butterflies.

The lucerne, however, has taken over the path, making it quite hard to find the path between the bushes.

I walked to the small grassed area at Fleet house, which is the graveyard of farm equipment, as between the rusting skeletons, wild flowers grow, and butterflies are in abundance.

The farmer has paddocked the field into which he hoped to have a five pitch caravan park, there's an electric fence now behind the hedge, and herbicide has been sprayed to limit natural plant growth. Two sad looking horses and a single sheep munch on the lucerne that's left.

I snap a few, and the flowers before walking back over the fields, as it was now mid-morning and getting very warm indeed.

Also, at ten past eleven, the Tour was to start, so back in time for that and sit down on the sofa with Poppy on the footstool, sleeping the hot day away.

Which was very wise.

For the first proper road stage, it turned into a mad GC race, with the leading breakaway featuring all the favourites, and on the final 500m, Tadej Pogačar broke from the pack to win the stage and take the yellow jersey from Jonas Vingegaard after they both were tied on identical times.

The evening entertainment was the Spain v Portugal last 16 game, and the question was, would Portugal be as bad as feared with Ronaldo playing?

The answer was "yes". A poor game won by Spain in injury time, but Ronaldo hardly touched the ball, and yet played the entire game.

Still, got to laugh.