To begin at the beginning…

This gave us kids chance to play, or in my case explore. This was a time when kids did that. We were trusted and the world around us was trustworthy and a place to learn lessons in life..

You have a nine year old Chris Avery here, at school he is spending his time watching the  influx of birds on the school field outside the classroom window. Depending upon the tides at the beach a few hundred yards away it could be just Rooks and Crows and Starlings, with the occasional exotic Lapwingor two. Or if the tide was in, it could be Curlew, Golden Plovers, Sanderling, Whimbrel and even the occasional Godwit. A bird book hidden in my desk confirmed the identifications. The day the Wheatears appeared was the best day of that year’s schooling. I really was a hopeless case for the education  system and a virtually daily thwack from Mr Greenhall for definitely not paying attention in class, did nothing to cure me of this habit.

( thinking back now, when you’re a child and you come across such a man who dominates your life for two years as class teacher. You just accept that his behaviour is what all normal adults do, only years later you realise he was more than a little unhinged).

Mr Greenhall professionally should have been a geologist, ambitiously he should have been an aeroplane designer, what he shouldn’t have done is ended up cooked up in a room for 8 hours a day with the things in life he appeared  to resent the most and couldn’t find an effective means to silence.. children.

To achieve that occasional bliss in his miserable existence of term time, he did occasionally do something brilliant. So I’m not saying it was all bad and we were only ruled over by the cane or his paddle shaped like, large bat, that he called the “Illywacker!” But then again, not a day passed without some light beatings for some victim or another. Mostly one of half a dozen usual suspect, and more often than not, me.

On my second year in his class on the 9th February in mid-morning after one caning that drew rather more tears than he was expecting from a new victim, he snapped the cane in half and threw it in the bin swearing to us all contritely, that he would never again cane a child.

Before home time he’d retrieved the longest remaining sectionfrom the bin, and was delivering it with a thwack across the open palm of my right hand. So much for his remorse.

Once a week on a Thursday afternoon however, he would bring out a gramophone unit and a big speaker. Our task was to slump forward with our heads on our crossed arms on the desk in front, eyes closed, in utter silence. And then concentrate while he played a record, which he encouraged us to imagine stories evoked by the music, so that we could then write a little essay about our interpretation of the piece. And these were not short pieces either. He creamed his monies worth of silence out of Vaughn Williams’ Lark Ascending, repeating it 2 or 3 times so we really got the picture, and it was glorious.

I was transfixed by these lessons. Through this I was introduced to Sibelius, Wagner, Rossini, Brusch and Mussorgsky. One week I asked for Beethoven’s fifth, I knew the name from a theme tune. He was delighted at my request, a forty minute piece with no need to deal with kids. I was so proud when he played it, and of gaining his acceptance at last.

The other thing that got my attention, apart from watching beatings, was when he would nonchalantly deliver a lesson, sat back, with his feet up on the desk, while whittling away at a piece of balsa wood, making model Gliders with the most beautiful elegant long wings. We couldn’t take our eyes of his sharp little blade chipping away, or him patiently shaping and smoothing with grades of sand paper as he talked about Romans in Britain or had the class taking it in turns to read aloud from Stig of the Dump. Every so often we would be marched as a class out onto the school field  to watch a test flight.

One time the glider soared and caught a draft taking it far and high over the school fence and high over the nearby bungalows out of view, it was magnificent. In charge of thirty kids he knew he couldn’t follow and retrieve it, nor march us out of the grounds to find it, and our fits of hopeless giggles raised to a crescendo of hysterics, which exasperated his frustration into a growing rage. The ‘illywacker’ was busy that afternoon.

Little wonder I paid scant attention to his actual lessons, his example for us was to be constantly looking for distractions from actual teaching.

At home my obsession beyond the bird watching, was in a forgotten corner in my dad’s garage, amongst the garden canes and discarded Hazel walking sticks.  This was a 4 or 5 ft solid glass fibre spinning rod with a red plastic handle, a very basic fixed spool reel loaded with some terribly inappropriate line, that when released at last from its inactivity boinged out like a slinky. I guess the line now was about 20lb breaking strain and hopelessly over optimistic.

It had all arrived in our family somehow via my big brother along with a small selection of tackle and spools of line, in an old WW2 air raid protection satchel. My brothers flirtation with it ended in the Lake District the summer previous when a hook caught him as he tugged and found its way deeply into his thumb, needing a trip with my father to find a local doctor to freeze his thumb and disgorge the hook... from that moment on my brother’s future fate turned towards the golf links; and that rod’s fate, to be neglected in the ‘forgotten and discarded’ corner of the garage gathering spiders’ webs.

(by a sort of coincidence, people who know me, will notice a scar on my left chin, this was inflicted by a 5 iron golf club when as an eight year old I got too close to a friend swinging it, hence I tended in my life’s path, to head away from the local golf links instead).

In the bag was an old cigar tin that had some coloured fur and feather fishing flies, this was my first hint there was some sort of fishing involving these and the intrigue began. With my love of wildlife and nature, that rod I seemed to realise, was my passport to see and appreciate the beautiful creatures under the mysterious water surface, too big, or out of reach of our hopeless pond dipping nets, and bring them into our hands.

So, back in the Lake district, my parents are sat frustrating the profits of some Lakeland hostelry with their thriftiness while using up some prime view seating, and I’m off exploring up the River Brathay at Skelwith falls thinking of that rod in the boot of the car, and imagining where in this river I would catch my fish. (Knowing there was a waterfall nearby and my innate ability to conjure up an accident from any situation.. the rod was thought best locked away that evening).

Up a higgledy piggledy rough track of wet slabs of slate, creating a long stair case under the high tree canopy; with a sturdy high black dry stone wall for reassurance on one side of the track, and a slender wooden rail preventing a rocky tumble through sporadic moss covered tree trunks and down into the rocky ‘gorge-let’ below on the vulnerable side of the path. Here as the roar of the falls grew, you passed along  looking down on a series of black pools, jagged rocks, and short white ribbons of water tying them together. Not too difficult for the adventurous to scramble down, but not too inviting either.

I’m soon level with the plunge pool below the waterfall in the full roar, looking down the mist sodden extra steps that lead down to it, and wondering if fish live in there. If there was a calm place in those turbulent waters for them?

I’d heard or seen on TV, that salmon jump up water falls, so why not? I had no idea what fish were here though.

And now my path is briefly level with the top of the falls, and a new series of pools upstream. But with the constant roar of that waterfall nearby and the fine mist swirling in the breeze, here, close by, I could see the “pull’ of water in those pools seemed too much for life of any type.

The water was briefly level with the still constantly rising track, looking ahead up above me, and now not far off, the tall dark dry stone wall to the side and the closing tree canopy became a tunnel that ended in a window of brighter light that was drawing me up and onwards. Here was a wooden clapper gate to squeeze through and then the ground sloped down and away, before levelling into a wide meadow that opened out across the valley. The base of a flat bowl in the surrounding hills and rising mountains, and across it meandered the continuing journey back to its source, the River Brathay.

A completely different prospect up here, the whole character of the land, water, and now having sky above, the scene was transformed in an instant. Firstly here, the River was now a broad, shallow pool, much wider than I knew I could cast with that rod, but soon the river took shape again , cutting down into the meadow a foot or so below the banks, several yards across to the far bank, and wound its path in sweeps around hillocks of closely planted old trees, then swinging and swaying wide around the fringes of foothills creeping down into the valley.

(hillocks of closely planted old trees)

From this slight raise of height viewing it from here, I could etch out its track into the distance, where at last the land rose up a tree lined slope and somewhere up there in a clearing in the woods, a remote white stone cottage had its lights on, glistening warmly as the evening drew in.

I wandered upstream under a wide open sky at last,  that shadowy canopy by the falls a memory now, and working along a footpath defined by the bank of the river, dotted occasionally with gnarly old thorn trees. Ancient trees, yet small and bent, sculpted by the harsh elements, showing this place is not always so tranquil and benign. These sentinels seem to mark the bends and features and amongst them a figure was moving some way off, but towards me, and he was carrying a fishing rod!

Before he knew it, his silence was shattered, and I was upon the poor soul with the hundreds  of questions demanding answers, especially when I saw the strange rod. What on earth was that?

It was long, not as long as the rods the coarse fishermen at home used but much longer than mine, it was incredibly springy and twitchy, alive with every movement and jolt, and made he said, of split cane. It looked old, but beautiful and very precious. The most peculiar thing was that he kept the old fashioned looking round reel at the very back of the handle, not the front like I did and other fishermen that I had met, and it wasn’t a spinning reel there was no bail arm. And that line? ; the line on my reel had been too thick, but his was even thicker and mustard yellow, but it wasn’t in coils. He said it was fly line. I then remembered the flies in the old cigar tin, could this be the mystery. “Are you using flies?”

No he told me, he was using worms and showed me the end of the line hooked to a little loop near the handle, after a long length of thin nylon he had two or three very small hooks tied in a line which he called Pennel tackle. “Do you fish with three worms”? No just one but he pricked it on each of the hooks so its stayed in line.

“Do you pick the worms up under stones”. But no, he had dug the worms up a day earlier in his garden, he opened a box from his jacket pocket, a small round tobacco tin and lifted a layer of moss off the top of the contents and there was a wriggling mass of bright red Brandling worms.  “Are you going to fish with them now?”

“No, I came to look but the colour has dropped out of the water. It’s no good for worms now, it was better yesterday when the water was higher, I was just about to give up and go home.”

“Where do you put the weight on to cast it ?”

“The fly line is the weight..”

What? what- what what?! ..This was completely beyond my comprehension,  I had to see this happen.

“It’s not far for me to come and look and see if it’s worth fishing, I live just up there” and he nodded back at the white cottage with the lights on. And with that, he turned homewards and left me with only 50 of my allotted questions answered and another hundred forming while he beated his retreat.

As he left I shouted one last question after him, “What do you catch?”  “Trout”, he called. He added a parting shot, “Brown Trout, that’s all that live in this river, them and Eels”. as he quickened the getaway from his diminutive tormentor.

I had never seen a Trout in my life and how the hell did he cast that rod. He could have shown me… Jeezus grownups were  just  so selfish and frustrating!

As it was I’d found in the old bag, a spool of line that was thinner and put it on the reel some time back, to practice casting it across the garden at home in St.Annes. Aiming a little lead, coffin shaped ledger at some Rose, or Carnation, patch of Catmint or potential prize Chrysanthemums in my father’s beloved flower borders. He looked at the growing devastation and blamed the Seagulls and Starlings that swooped down on the bread board of crumbs and crusts my mum used to shake into the garden every morning for the birds. “You need to stop throwing that  bread out Dot, the seagulls are wrecking the garden!”

Now the setup was in the Lake district with us loaded with line that didn’t instantly tangle, so that next day I got digging worms, never easy when you don’t know where to look, But I did know where to look for Trout and where a real Trout fishermen fished for them. I was all set..

That evening my parents, these creatures of habit, frustrated my ambitions however and chose a different Inn in a different village far from Skelwith.

Elterwater is a small village in a steep valley near two local slate quarries, one produces rich plummy blue slate, the other produces light green, with a waste of red iron coloured boulders. The old cottages along the streets are often a delightful mix of both the waste stone and the green slate, and the river bed is carpeted with both stones, creating a slightly surreal and unique two tone, freestone, stream bed. It was such a relief, seeing this water ,a mere stone’s throw from the front of the old Brittania Inn where my parents expected to find their evening’s nirvana over a long drawn out half pint.

(the two tone stones in the walls and river bed)

And so I was left to my own devices on the gravel shoreline by a pool under the bridge  for an hour or so with just two clear instructions; not to wander too far, and, not to fall in.

The problem here was that the river was too deep for me to make it across the far bank, and peculiarly on my bank, downstream of this pool a high drystone wall was built hard against the bank of the stream, so wading or boulder hopping was the only way to new water. There was no chance of wandering far, I was penned in. 

I had a single hook, with a worm on, I couldn’t copy the Pennel rig my reluctant instructor had inadvertently advised, but made do.  I found casting them soon depressingly depleted my store of worms as I caught rocks and then they flew off on the next cast. So I discovered from necessity that dropping them downstream with a free line and then retrieving kept the worm on longer, but still I caught rocks occasionally and then needed to find a way downstream level with it, to cross pull it out from the side.

It was on one of these retrieves, rock hopping onto a particularly slippy boulder  that I slid down the rock unable to brake, and deeply gasped as I took the icy plunge down to my chest, shrinking everything dangling to a tight hard nut.. it was bitter, teeth chattering, icy cold mountain water, but I had fish to catch and some evening sun left, dappled under the canopy, to warm me. 

(On a moss covered boulder , with by back steadied against this forked tree trunk,)

More time that evening was spent turning over rocks looking for precious worms, and the effort invested made the losses when they came, even greater and my next search all the more frantic.. Without being able to move too far, my drifts for uncovered water, got much longer downstream. I found that I could  stand on some slippery, moss covered boulder, with by back steadied against a forked tree trunk, bathed in a pool of weak, yet warming, dappled evening light, and reach towards midstream to achieve what felt like a reasonably long drift of clear current. On one ridiculously long drift  I again caught a rock, way off downstream, and pulled back into it a few jerks and realised it was solid.

I shrugged and slumped defeated, wet, cold, beaten and preparing for the verbal barrage when my parents soon saw the state of me. I was about to try and rock hop down to salvage it, when I gave it some slack line first to see if it would free itself and sure enough it started to move further downstream. And then the rod came alive as if it was suddenly switched on, like it was pulsing with some new unfamiliar power, as what turned out to be a small wild brown trout was then flopped and fumbled back up a fast mountain stream on a hopelessly bendy toy rod, the fish feeling monstrous in size. When I finally got to see its glistening body and its markings as I gripped it safely in my hands, I couldn’t believe how beautiful these creatures are. No picture in a book had prepared me for this encounter. A life long membership of the wild Brown Trout fan club was signed and sealed in that moment. I was now converted and committed to the madness.

Before I was ten or eleven I’d saved and scraped together pocket money enough to buy a little book, The Trout by Winifred Frost and Margaret Brown  a scientific study in the New Naturalist  Series. The paperback copy from a second hand shop had a picture of a Wild Brown Trout from underwater in a Trout stream on the cover, that sold it to me. It contained no advice on how to catch trout or cast rods, or the best places to go, but now I owned it I devoured the information and read it cover to cover. While the other kids around me were reading of Lions Witches and Wardrobes; Hobbits; or Weird stones of Brisingamen, I was reading over and over again the comparative growth rates and spawning ages in strange places with names like the Test; Itchen; Avon; Teifi; and Corrib. But also in Windermere; Yew tree tarn and Wastwater; Lake district names that I knew and recognised from family holidays and could relate to and knew I would revisit. My copy and constant companion eventually fell apart many years later but was replaced by a 1st edition which sits at my elbow on my desk still.

My parents came back to the bridge to tell me it was time for home and looked down to see their boy dripping wet and knees bloodied, with a huge grin on his face and his arm high in the air, triumphantly  gripping aloft, six inches of dead Trout in his little fist. “look I’ve caught us all our breakfast for tomorrow”!

Little mention was made of the wet car seat, I think it was realised to be a moment that should be relished and I was obviously absolutely jubilant. After a gentle admonishment about what spending hours in wet clothes could do to my health,  and tenderly being told to go and get dry, it wasn’t mentioned ever, apart from becoming a further reference point on the growing map of my childhood misadventures, peppered with spots where Chris again fell into some water or other.

The only slight disappointment came in the morning when the family all had there normal cornflake and toast breakfast,and were not playing ball with my plan.

I’d gone to sleep dreaming of them all gratefully feasting themselves full on my delicious bounty.  

As a great white hunter I had failed the first hurdle so often and now the second. But my mum had got there earlier and prepared the little fish, pan fried it for me with a few bits of toast. Its fantastic buttery taste almost made up for my disappointment of not having the Jesus like qualities to be able to feed a family of 6, with just one tiny trout, but I was definitely in on this malarkey now.. hook line and sinker and until death do I part!

Somehow I was going to be a Fly fishermen for wild Brown Trout. When I knew how they cast those rods.

( but was replaced by a 1st edition which sits at my elbow on my desk still.)

I hope you all have a wonderful week out in Sexyloops land

All the best to all, Chris Avery