Cerne Abbas - then and now

The Royal Oak, Cerne Abbas - John Piper

The Royal Oak, Cerne Abbas - John Piper

The Royal Oak, Cerne Abbas - 2017

If you see someone, tell them that someone is safe

The blog has suffered from radio silence for a while – the dreaded blue screen of death appeared and I thought all was lost. A lifetime digitised and not backed up. I closed the screen and thought that I would have a little sleep and see what happened…….nothing happened so a technical expert was called in whilst I went fishing and forgot about it for weeks.

Success! Normal service resumes…….

I have just returned from a delightful adventure to the River Severn in Shropshire. The annual pilgrimage to a water of my youth is now, hopefully, a permanent fixture in my anglers calendar. I have written about the place before, which sits in a quiet fold of Shropshire cattle countryside, where memories are fond and paths well-trodden. They say never go back, but I think once a year is just enough to keep the old memories alive.

It’s barbel  and chub country and I rarely fished it years ago if the river was anywhere near the level it was on this trip – flood conditions were the time to head to the river and huge lumps of Spam (4 hook baits from one tin) on a size 1 Aberdeen hook. Big bait, big fish.

These days it’s a tad more refined, you have to find fish along a long stretch as the barbel have certainly dispersed and are not there in the numbers we enjoyed back in the 1990’s. The locals blame a few summer floods which wiped out the ranunculus beds which the barbel loved, but who knows……….

The fishing is not important to me really, the joy is friendship. Friends who never change, unlike the river, and have their own lovely ways. For that the trip was memorable and I can’t wait for next year.