We report on an experimental study of the temporal evolution of OH density and gas temperature in spark discharges created by nanosecond repetitively pulsed discharges in pure water vapour at 475 K and atmospheric pressure. The plasma was generated by 20 kV, 20 ns pulses, at a repetition frequency of 10 kHz. The temperature was measured during the discharge by optical emission spectroscopy of the second positive system of N2, and between two discharges by two-colour OH-planar laser induced fluorescence (OH-PLIF) using two pairs of rotational transitions. Between two successive discharges, the relative density of OH was measured by OH-PLIF and was found to decay very slowly, with a 1/e decay time of about 50 µs. With the use of a chemical kinetics model, the OH density was placed on an absolute scale.