It’s been a long slow start to spring here at Savages Cottage.  The grass is knee high and every time I get a chance to cut it the rain seems to fall again and make this an impossible task.  The woodland wildflowers have come in a compressed rush, celandine, ransom, bluebell and daffodil all appearing in a jumble of colour rather than the usual unfolding succession marking the shift from winter to summer.

Since opening day on April 1st the rivers have been high, the water coloured and the banks sodden.  Fishing has been a distant dream.

So when the temperatures hit 28° this weekend and my lovely talented fly fisher friend Polly asked me if I fancied fishing the afternoon there was no real choice; it had to be the true, full blooded chalk stream experience that is the Bourne.

Crossing the road at Porton we walk into the cool shade of the alder and willow.  Evening light slants in from across the wet marsh-marigold-heavy meadows behind us casting sharp long shadows across the water, spooking fishy shadows from their lies.

We blanked of course. It’s a seasonal right of passage on the Bourne although it really doesn’t matter. It’s the being there, the promise of golden evenings to come.

The promise of warm humid evenings with the air filled with the hum of insects and the rivers surface covered by spreading concentric circles.