I have been on my summer holidays for a bit. Mostly for financial reasons I take myself and my kids off to my Mum's on the south coast for a couple of weeks. I go down quite a lot for weekends but the whole thing is rather snatched and there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.
This year my kids begged me to go away somewhere that didn't involve visiting family. Unfortunately, with my family spread to the four corners of the kingdom plus a bit of the U.S. that sort of holiday is unavoidable. Not for a us a week in some sun drenched beach haven like everyone else. I did relent, after some consideration this time however. A fortnight of me and the kids once a year is about all my Mum can cope with. With that in mind I relented and compromised with a long weekend camping in Cornwall sandwiched between Grandparent visits. The idea was well received.

And thus I have just spent 5 miserable, sleep disturbed nights in the English West Country.

More on that trip for another time. Because this post is about fishing.

Last night, as I rested my eyes from a day involved with playing catch with a couple of kids who have grown alarmingly fit, my gaze alighted upon a volume of work by Arthur Ransome. He wrote the tale of Swallows and Amazons in the thirties and was made into a children's film in the seventies. It actually is more about sailing than fishing and shall not be mentioned again. This book was in fact a collection of pieces he wrote for the Manchester Guardian in the twenties before he started writing novels.

In it the collator has amassed a bunch of work all about fishing. Not particularly about actual fishing but more the rites and rituals engaged in by the angling community that allows them to follow their sport. The Manchester Guardian must have been a good read in those days as not only were there letters by Arthur Ransome but the Cricket correspondent was a Neville Cardus and his prose is still regarded to this day as the most eloquent on the subject ever written. However there is an apocryphal tale of how he left a game early as he felt it was petering out to a dis interesting finish and he had dinner in London to attend.

This was in the days before mobile phones let alone Internet, mobile or otherwise, and the famous correspondent arrived in London to find the game had turned on it's head and he needed to re write his piece for the paper that night. Not actually having seen the game he felt the need to be as effusive as possible in the hope nobody would realise he was not there. Some time later the writer was met by one of the batsman who had taken part in the game and who Cardus had described. The batsman shook his hand profusely whilst saying he was ever so grateful for the piece as no one had ever described his batting in such glorious language before.

Sorry I am losing the plot. My point is fishing. I do not get it. I know it is the most popular participation sport in the UK but I don't understand why?

My Dad was a fisherman. That sounds like he went to sea and cast his net. No he had pretensions to be a gentleman angler. He took off on many weekends with his best pal and sought refuge from a wicked world by encouraging simple animals to throw themselves on hooks and be hauled ashore. and he did this in the shadow of some of the woolliest mountains Wales had to offer.

I guess I can see a pattern emerging though. My Father and his angling partner were made from the same stuff as the author of the angling letters. It was not the actual fishing that was so important it was all the stuff you had to do to get to the point where you might be able to find yourself in a position to be able to encourage a handsome trout throw itself on a hook.

First there was the rod (some sort of cane was best in those days), then you needed reels and a selection of lines depending on whether you were floating or sinking that day. You had to have an extensive collection of hooks which appeared to have bits of fluff attached and were purported to resemble flies trout eat. Having got yourself kitted out you had to stalk the river bank to see if the trout were rising and after what? Then you placed a hook with a bit of fluff on your line that looked nothing like it and let the fun begin.

I still don't get it.

Angling is not the only sport to behave in such a way. A good friend of mine once described a scuba diving trip he had recently enjoyed. The whole underwater experience lasted for a matter of minutes but he was offshore for hours. He described in detail all the checks he had to not only perform on his equipment but to his "buddy" also. They jumped in and clambered out and that was it. But it seemed to me that it was all the mucking about with kit that was actually so attractive.

What does this show?

That it is all about the journey and not the destination