A trout from Canterbury by Izaac Walton

A gallant trout

Izaak Walton wrote a charming little book on Angling, ranging through many topics, including the trout in all its varieties. We often see them in Canterbury, indeed I was once presented with an excellent trout, caught by one of my pupils, whose mother would not let it into the house, but he did not want to waste it. It was not as big as a salmon, but plenty of ‘rare meat’ for two. That fish had an empty belly, in November, but was caught on a grain of sweetcorn.

There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a Trout (called there a Fordig Trout) a Trout (that bears the name of the Town [Fordwich] where ’tis usually caught) that is accounted rare meat, many of them near the bigness of a Salmon, but known by their different colour, and in their best season cut very white; and none have been known to be caught with an Angle, unless it were one that was caught by honest Sir George Hastings, an excellent Angler (and now with God) and he has told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger, but wantonness; and ’tis the rather to be believed, because both he then, and many others before him have been curious to search into their bellies what the food was by which they lived; and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.

Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler, 1653.

Start reading it for free: https://amzn.eu/3T59M

Willow for shelter in summer.

These lines are part of a song in the Compleat Angler of Izaac Walton, written by John Chalkhill, his relative by marriage. Chalkhill was a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser.

Snow on the ground in the photograph, but one day in Spring I chose this piece for a Summer’s day, trusting that there might be ‘excessive heat’ coming the reader’s way. I was editing it soon after cutting down osiers; the previous year’s growth of coppiced willow, as seen above. Often they are grown within a slow-moving river. Then again, I find myself walking under willows almost every day beside the River Stour. I often had occasion to shelter under willows during my time as a very incompleat angler in Ireland. I did catch a very respectable pike once and good eating it was too!

Wintry willows beside the River Tame

If the sun's excessive heat 
Make our bodies swelter, 
To an osier hedge we get 
For a friendly shelter! 
Where in a dike, 
Perch or pike, 
Roach or dace, 
We do chase, 
Bleak or gudgeon, 
 Without grudging, 
We are still contented. 
Or we sometimes pass an hour 
Under a green willow, 
That defends us from a shower,  
Making earth our pillow 
Where we may 
Think and pray, 
Before death 
Stops our breath: 
Other joys  
Are but toys,                      
And to be lamented.

Just a light breakfast, please.

There was a spring in my step, despite the Autumn day and my Autumnal years. I had just been told that my cataract op had been successful, healing was proceeding according to expectations. And the sun came out.

Why not have fish and chips for lunch at Herne Bay clocktower? The shop recommended by Abel was open. I had to wait for the meal to be cooked, and it was all I could do to eat this ‘small’ portion, or so I thought. All of it was delicious.

This board advertising a light breakfast caught my rejuvenated eye. I’m not sure I’d have put that away even when I was doing hard manual work for a living! No doubt it will be as well cooked as the fish and someone will enjoy it, to the last little bean.

Welcome Home!

 

The Butterflies’ teacher came round after school to bring the ex-frog spawn which was ready to leave school. (The Butterflies can look forward to another eleven or twelve years of it!)

Some of the former little black dots were now hopping on and off the big flint in the middle of their tank, and the rest had legs and were losing their tails. All of them seemed happy to dive into the pond where they were laid. I’m sure more survived into froghood than if they’d stayed in the pond. Mrs Turnstone cannot blame the goldfish for predation after she took ours to her pond at work.

 

Mr Blackbird discovered this source of protein last year and was keeping an eye this, till the duckweed covered the surface. Now the fish ate most of that, when we had fish. As well as the weed, the frogs of all sizes have logs and rocks to hide themselves away. But can you spot the frogs in the bottom picture?

Where were we?

Driving along Britain’s motorways, often you could be forgiven for having little idea where you are. There are places like Mill Hill on the M1 or Bury on the M66 where you find yourself rushing obscenely close to people’s homes but often the road runs through cuttings with no view of the surroundings.

Somewhere in Yorkshire on the M62 I spotted a sign ‘River Calder’. There was no other sign of the river; its bridge was barely discernible (to me at least). Although the car is king, for the present at least, there was a nod to the original power of this landscape: the water that formed it and powered the first factories along its banks.

Downstream at Castleford the Calder joins the Aire:

The Castleford lasses are bonny and fair,

For they wash in the Calder and rinse in the Aire.

When I first heard that rhyme, no sensible lass or lad would put a toe into the rivers, heavily polluted as they were by all those factories. Today the water is cleaner, the fish and wildlife are returning, but bathing might be a colder experience than many lasses would go for!

There is another River Calder across the hills in Lancashire; this one spends its whole life in Yorkshire.

Beside the Thames

Last Autumn I wrote about a walk along the Thames near Richmond, with Belted Galloway cattle near the end of it. Today I walked from Waterloo to Lambeth beside a river confined by embankments, with light shipping passing by the Palace of Westminster and cyclists, joggers, dog-walkers and tourists in both directions along the path, not all looking where they were going.

One thing I was hoping to see, but only saw when I wasn’t looking for it – a cormorant. Picture this, if you will, flying past the Houses of Parliament; I was on the opposite bank.

In my youth anyone falling in the River might have died from poisoning. They even kept my little brother in hospital for observation after he fell into the Serpentine Lake in the park (and I had to go home on the bus in wet clothes after dragging him out).

There must be enough fish in the river to satisfy those greedy cormorants.

When my mother and I visited my brother in hospital on the following Friday he was happy to say goodbye. Dinner had arrived – fish and chips and it looked really tasty! He’s still very fond of fish and there are even herons along the Serpentine these days.

RSPB image, see: http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/c/cormorant/index.aspx