Hot Enough for Snakes!

It's been a very hot and humid day today, I suspect the temperature got up to about 30C this afternoon. We have an Amber warning for thunderstorms and associated heavy rain overnight, fingers crossed we miss the worst of it. G and I went for an earlier walk on Kelling Heath this morning, but it was a struggle and we were happy of a stop in the shade at the holiday village (G had a drink and I had a gooseberry ice cream tub by Ronaldos). Lots of foxgloves around to photograph, and then near the end of the walk I spotted this adder slithering across the path on my side. Thankfully I spotted it before stepping on it, it is the only poisonous snake in the UK with 50-100 reported bites annually, but they rarely result in death. I managed to snatch a few photos and two were almost in focus. I've added an extra showing the other photo of the whole snake. This afternoon I watched more tennis from Queens. It's now 26C indoors (even with blackout blinds and curtains closed all day) and I think it unlikely I can reduce the temperature much this evening, so I doubt I'll sleep well in the heat and with the thunderstorms. Thankfully we'll be back to normal weather by Sunday. I also rang a Building Society to merge two accounts - and mid call one of my smoke alarms / carbon dioxide alarms started beeping loudly every minute! After the call I tracked down the culprit and changed the batteries….and it still beeped. I nearly assumed it was faulty, but decided to check each battery on a tester and one new one had virtually no charge! All sorted now.