A week ago today Steven Lawler and I witnessed some remarkable behaviour on the Guadalhorce – the gypsy barbel were leaping up a weir and falling back into the river. They looked for all the world like salmon.
We noticed that they never cleared the wall, despite coming pretty close at times. Steve took a close look at them and suggested that they were not trying to clear this obstacle, as we had first thought, but were feeding in the silkweed on the weir itself. Continue reading
If you fish from a float tube, and are sitting in chest waders for hour on end, you will be aware that it is a good idea to go for a wee before you set sail. Very often the margins are sheer and rocky and so it becomes impractical to haul up and answer the call of nature. This is particularly true of Concepción where Steven Lawler and I set out on Saturday to do battle with black bass.
Mindful of the hard-won lesson about the need to powder one´s nose before setting out, I trotted off into the long grass this morning just as soon as I had tackled up. Continue reading
On Saturday I spent a day fishing with Steven Lawler on my local river. Steven is a very experienced and accomplished fisherman and has fished many exotic locations. He has also fished several of exulted chalk streams of England, the “Holy Grail” for lowly heathens like me. He has also enjoyed wonderful trout fishing in Eastern Europe. On the banks of the Guadalhorce he told me an intriguing story about a fishing adventure in Slovenia.
I don´t know a whole lot about Slovenia, to be truthful, but it turns out that it is very beautiful and has remarkable fishing; pristine rivers, free-rising trout. It also turns out, as it happens, that the natives of that country are pretty uninhibited sorts who think nothing stripping off of sun bathing along river banks in the nude. Continue reading
Last Tuesday I came across a red-legged partridge on the way to play squash with Nick Edwards.
I suppose I should point out, for the sake of clarity, that it was me going to play squash with Nick and not the partridge. Having said that, Nick wiped the floor with me, as he does most weeks, and I imagine the partridge would have had about the same success had it decided step in for me.
It is not at all unusual to come across these birds in the kind of open country and scrub that they favour but I was pretty surprised to come across one on the path at the Club del Sol Tennis Club! Continue reading
Pip and I were out walking with the dogs this afternoon and we decided, just for the hell of it, to have a photography competition. The idea was simple enough. Each of us would take as many photos as we like and then whittle them down to a shortlist of 5. Mum would be the judge and score our photos out of 10. Mum´s words are final. Everybody knows that.
The campo is just crazy with flowers at the moment. It is just lovely out there. It seems, in places, as though clouds passed overhead and rained paint – purple clouds, yellow clouds. The verges of the paths are overgrown and heaving with colour. sometimes the dogs, straying off the track would just disappear into the plants as though they had been swallowed by the campo. Continue reading
We heard a sad story when we walked the Caminito del Rey. It was told to us by one of the guides and concerns three local young men.
You don´t need me to tell you that young men are full of testosterone and bravado and they get up to crazy stuff from time to time. Sadly, there have been a number of fatalities here which have been reported from time to time in the press. Continue reading
As you may be aware I walked the Caminito del Rey recently with my friend Julio and we were both hugely impressed by the place. The walkway is half way some way up vertical cliff faces and a question that inevitably pops into your mind is this: “why would anyone build a walkway in a place like this?”
It turns out that to understand the walkway you need to think about something about which I was previously unaware – a canal. Extraordinary as it might seem, and it is at least as extraordinary as the Caminito itself, there is a canal which was built through this inhospitable terrain. Continue reading
On Thursday I had a chance to walk through a stunning gorge along a famous walking path called “El Camino del Rey” or “Caminito del Rey.” The walk is named after King Alfonso XIII who walked this path, or more correctly the “old” Camino del Rey path, almost 100 years ago. It is a quite remarkable experience to complete this walk and I was lucky enough to walk it in the company of a good friend, Julio Rodriguez.
The walk is fascinating for all kinds of reasons. In addition to the jaw-dropping scenery, the history of the walk is fascinating as is the natural history. I am planning to consider the history and natural history in future posts on this blog, together with a sad story we heard from a walking guide. Continue reading
Imagine sitting on an armchair in the middle of a reservoir. The armchair should be as comfortable as the one in your living room. You should be able to rest your arms on the sides and the back should be soft and supportive.
As it happens I have an armchair just like that. It floats, which is just as well since the bottom of the reservoir may be far beneath you! Okay, it´s not really an armchair, not technically, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be. It is certainly just as comfortable. It is a float tube. Continue reading
Big brown trout are hard to come by, or at least, I find them hard to come by. And so I am full of admiration for people who are able to catch them consistently. One person who has caught a shed load of large trout is Dennis Moss and he wrote an interesting account of one of his big fish, taken in Lough Arrow, in his book “Irish Rise”. Continue reading
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