The story so far:– I went coarse fishing, then after my marriage, I went sea fishing. Now this is the time when I grow tired of Manchester once and for all. Ever since I started going to visit my sister’s near what is now Milton Keynes, I fancied living further south and away from those dreary northern towns.
Epoch 1
An opportunity arises with a job going in Lincolnshire, Essendine to be precise, a quiet little village betwixt Stamford and Bourne. My first day (after the interview and job offer) in Stamford and I went for lunch in a local hostelry in the town, which boasts to have once been the home of Daniel Lambert, the fattest man who ever lived in Britain (sorry Deanos, someone beat you to it). A huge plate of steak pie and things resembling doorstops, but what the locals there called ‘chips’, which you’d get maybe four at best out of the biggest King Edward. Then a look up to see the portrait of Mr Lambert, puts you right off your food.
Eventually we moved, lock, stock, etc., to just south of Bourne in the village of Thurlby. South of us is the River Glen and beyond, running through Market Deeping the gorgeous River Welland (see pic) as well as more drains and gravel pits than you could shake a stick at. All of this water around and would you know, I never went coarse fishing once. I gave fishing up completely other than one failed boat fishing attempt from Great Yarmouth.
Instead, my mind was filled with gardening, growing my own, tending the soil, self-sufficiency! The Good Life!
I had a proper greenhouse at last and about a third of an acre as garden, enough for my pond, a lawn, and plenty left for vegetables. I grew cabbage, carrots, sprouts, French beans, peas (not worth it though), broccoli, and even sweetcorn. The greenhouse was full of all different varieties of tomatoes, Tigrella, Golden Sunrise, Ailsa Craigs and I once grew some enormous cucumbers, Zeppelin they were called, 16 inches long with a 14 inch girth. I tell you, the ladies of the village were always after me for one of them, was I popular!
At work, we bartered and traded. Richard, my colleague there, grew some lovely beetroots and parsnips and I would trade him some of our apples. I made some beautiful wines whilst I was there from all sorts of ingredients, but most favourite was the apple wine, which we named Appfelmilch, and the beetroot wine, which went down well with the mother-in-law who was convinced it was strong sweet sherry. I also made some blackberry vinegar that I gave to a friend who – poured it on his Yorkshire puddings. That’s what they do with it and he said it was the best he’d tasted since his mum’s.
The only problem was, my wife didn’t like the flatness of Lincolnshire. She hated being too far away from a major shopping centre and even Peterborough didn’t measure up to her standards. She counted it as a blessing when the company I worked for, Fiat-Allis, decided to move all production to Italy and I was one of the first to be made redundant.
In my profession, a systems analyst and programmer, finding a job would be fairly easy, just not in Lincolnshire. So I cast the net further afield and two seemed promising, one in Barnsley, the other in Langley, Berkshire. What decided it was the weather at the interviews.
On the Tuesday I’d been to Langley and afterwards sat in a pub garden with a plate full of quiche, salad, chips and a pint, jacket off and for April that ain’t bad. Three days later I went to Barnsley and as I parked the car it started to snow, when I came out the car had 9 inches of snow on the roof and Woodhead Pass was completely blocked with snowdrifts.
So, big question. Barnsley – cold and snowing, Langley – warm and sunny? Hmmmm. No contest.
Epoch 2
Soon after arriving here, I stayed in Windsor until we moved and started to look around for fisheries hoping I’d find a house close to a river, maybe? Maidenhead looked good, but along the river you could add £100,000 just for the position before you talked about the house (these days it’s £1m). Marlow was on the river and we asked an estate agent for some details, showed her a picture of our house in Thurlby and told her we could put another £15,000 to the £25,000 that we’d sold that for. All she said was “If sir is looking for that type of dwelling for that amount, sir had better look in High Wycombe where it’s very much cheaper.”
Well, say what you like about me, but I am not a snob, that’s why I don’t mind talking to you lot on here. So High Wycombe it was, but even then, a lot of the properties fell well below expectation levels. Eventually we found this little bungalow for the agreed £40,000 and we’ve been here ever since.
I soon discovered that we were on the right side of town anyway to get to the Thames, just 4 miles away along back country lanes and a fairly pretty drive once you got past the town’s dump. What did that matter when you drove down the hill to Marlow and laid out before you is the beautiful Thames Valley, a sight the Marlow residents don’t often get of course. So within 10 minutes I could easily be on the bank fishing, that’s how it was and still is only now I’m lucky enough to fish from the Compleat Angler Hotel as well.
We also have in High Wycombe a little canalised stream called The Dyke that holds a good stock of roach, Perch, tench, pike, some carp, and even chub. I got Daniel fishing with me, he was 10 by then, and together we had some great trips out with visits to the Grand Union Canal as well at Harefield. He doesn’t go any longer, gave up when he found he didn’t like the smell of fish. Strange boy!
The challenge on the Dyke was to try and catch the tench. The way we did it was to choose a large bodied float set at about 7 feet deep, a size 8 hook with a pretty large shot to produce the lift method, and a large pinch of bread flake. The line had to be 6lbs minimum and at that time, a six pound line was still pretty thick, not like the lines of today. The difficulty came in casting this lot to almost the far side, but not quite on the path because that’s where the public walked; strangely they never scared the fish that much.
In spite of all of those difficulties we had a fair measure of successes and one year we’d bought Daniel a Ricoh camera, a nice one too, for Christmas and almost every fish we caught had to be photographed. I don’t know what happened to most of them, but one survives that shows me developing the grumpy look I’m now instantly recognisable for. That must be the first ever capture on film of a developing face and it’s still with me to this day only more refined now of course.
Epoch 3
I’ll fast forward a few years to 1989 when I got a contract working for a petrochemical company based in Rotterdam. They had offices in Maidenhead, but plants near Rotterdam, Marseilles and also Ghent in Belgium. That was a glorious time and I must have spent as much time in the air as I did on the ground, it was a very nice earner too, but left me no time for fishing. Oh, how I was upset (NOT!) and comforted myself with the promise that on one trip to Sausset-le-Pins (France), where we stayed, I’d take my spinning rod to try and catch these little blue fish that swam around in the harbour, from outside my bedroom window.
It was very hard and dirty work, but somebody had to do it. Holding meetings outside in the Bar de la Plage and dining our fellow workers at night in the restaurant above that specialized in fish dishes, their bass was to die for, fresh in daily! Being regular guests we got to know the elderly owners, grandma was nice, grandad was another grump from who I learnt a lot. Then there was the daughter, Nicole, and her American husband, Ron, both of whom made us very welcome and allowed us the use of the family’s swimming pool just across the road. That’s the first time I’ve ever swum with a Labrador alongside, the German Shepherd didn’t swim.
Never did take that spinning rod along and I don’t whether I should mention the afternoon strolls along the beach, the beers sipped en plein air at the beach café gazing out on the topless lady bathers catching the last rays of the fading evening sun on their beautifully oiled and bronzed ….. Oh, sorry!
After the contract finished you’d think I’d get back to fishing, but instead I started up another company selling translation software. A bad move and it was two more years before I slapped myself across the face and said “There’s fishing to be had! Go and do it.” So eventually in the summer of 1992 I regained my common sense and started again, but soon found that in three years tackle had changed and so should I.
Epoch 4 (this is why it’s Part 4×4)
One year, 1994, I found a young keen lad called Omar and started taking him fishing. He joined me for three years until after he’d left school and he started cheffing and you guessed it, had no time for fishing any longer. Later he found, like all good lads, that women existed and that took his brain off in other directions.
In 1996, our Secretary of the local club died suddenly as a result of a stroke and I ended up with the job. They gave me bank balances of about £4,500 and then I found debts of £5,500, but with the agreement of the creditors, I soldiered on and saved the club. When I left it three years later, they had £11,000, all debts cleared and three new waters stocked with fish. (Details on the ‘Running a Club as a Business’ article.)
Since then I have been involved with The Compleat Angler Hotel in Marlow and now produce the fishing tickets. I organised a match in 1998 to which we invited 9 previous England Team members including 3 World Champions. Ian Heaps, Alan Scotthorne, and ladies World champion, Wendy Locker. Also included was dear old Ivan Marks, Kim Milsom, Dave Vincent, Steve Gardener, Mark Pollard, Sandra Halkon-Hunt (as she was then), and Keith Arthur came too bringing along the Sky Sports team to film it.
After the match we had a grand buffet of – coarse fish, a pity for my wife since she doesn’t like fish at the best of times. We had the presentation of the prizes with Keith taking the £1000 main prize together with a large print copy of a young fisherman. Ivan spent a lot of the night talking to me whilst on his knees rather than sitting in a chair, but he paid for it the next day when he could barely walk. There’s not many sports where a champion of his calibre would talk to a non-entity like me from his knees, but that man was an absolute diamond!
Around that time I also started the Thames Valley Angling Association, I think there were 7 clubs in it originally and we fished one large pit. Today, after 11 years, I am still Secretary, but we now have 13 clubs representing 2000 members and 5 stretches of river, and they said it wouldn’t last! We have the best stretch of the Jubilee River, the Thames bypass channel to prevent flooding, and this year is going to be the best yet!
That’s about it because since all of that happened I have been writing for FishingMagic and hopefully many of you will have kept up with my missives, reviews, features and postings. I still enjoy my fishing and I’m not too old to learn still, although a lot of things I have seen before, there’s still much more to be discovered. That the real beauty of angling, you never do get to THE END.
