Catch & Release

Can it still be called ‘catch & release’ when the trout manage to release themselves?

So far four trout have released themselves without any help from David. And it's no fishy tale either; I was watching when two of them got off. One took off downstream jumping for joy- boing, boing, boing! And I’m still waiting on trout for dinner!

The weather has been brilliant and the expected influx of vans and people over the weekend hasn’t happened and other than a couple of small vans at the far end, we’ve had the place to ourselves. It's been lovely to relax in the sun and watch the world go by. It's also been rather warm & humid and I've had my first swim of the season. A rather hurried splash & dip as the water was ice cold!

While David continued to chase the elusive fish this morning, I walked up to the top of the valley before it got to hot. That’s us beside the river and if you look carefully you can see a tiny speck in the water near by, that’s David.

Deer are such loopy creatures. There is a couple of deer paddocks at the top of the hill. They were milling around and chasing each other near the fence as I approached and then they spotted me and the alarm went out.

They took off in such a rush that they were tripping over each other to get to the other side where they rounded up and stared me down. I stood still for a long while hoping they’d come back to have a look. They snorted and stamped and a few brave ones trotted out a few paces before loosing their bottle and racing to hide behind the others. I gave up after awhile and carried on. As soon as they saw me returning down the road they raced off again to the other corner. Talk about skittish.