MY Perthshire loch trout had only just taken off their winter-ice crash helmets and were limbering up with some springtide exercises (incentivised by a few koi-carp pellets) when, in early May, I headed down for the first of several visits to the southern streams.
After an unprecedented two-year interval, the six members of our Bundha Club reconvened on the banks of the Dever. This bonsai paragon of chalk country offers an ideal counterpart to the Highland glens, being deliciously gentle, bucolic and willow-girt; the water is perfect for my favourite pastime of fish-spotting and, indeed, at times, the trout almost seem to be swimming in ether. Lockdown psychic baggage was soon unpacked, together with my lovely new Helios 3 fly rod, which I had just collected from those nice people at Orvis. Time to open the season.
Despite the yobbish weather—water witches, pitchforking rainy squalls—things gradually came together and, although the trout were as leery as bonefish, by lunchtime, I had managed a modest ‘basket’ of brownies (all but the first being returned) and encountered some socking great grayling—Luke ‘Killing Eve’ Jennings grassed one of nigh on 3lb. In the bankside marquee, we toasted our fellowship with a flinty Sauvignon and gave thanks that God made us anglers.
Next day, I drove to the storied Bourne Rivulet, the topmost tributary of the Test, through villages where even the bus shelters are thatched and past the Longparish edifice, former home of that redoubtable Regency sportsman Col Peter Hawker, who once accounted for 243 starlings with a single blast from his punt gun. My host was the engaging William Daniel (of Famous Fishing fame), who has been helping to nurture the fragile Bourne for some 30 years.
Denne historien er fra July 28, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra July 28, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
