Summer daze

Out and about with the little uns today, not the hottest of days but pleasant enough down below the cliffs on the strands.  We have so many lovely and long beaches you never really feel hemmed in.

Hunting for hearts in Mundesley, only about 70 to go.....

Chips, the bronze drop and (self sown) nasturtiums for the ravening hordes.

Journey's end for the obligatory ice cream and doughnut (but not for me).

You'd be thinking that with those blue skies that I'd be out fishing tonight. Especially with this little beauty to break in. Sadly rain has stopped play. It has taken two days to dry everything dried out from a quick 10 minutes with a few worms on Wednesday that led to getting absolutely soaked under an old and thus sparse oak along with nearly 2 dozen stupid stinking sheep for a storm lighted hour. They were touching the trunk and were not wearing wellies or derriboots so I figured they would get fried first  if the lightning did strike the biggest thing round for about  a mile..

Now, will my frozen casters be defrosted casters or just mush when I look at them tomorow?
I do seem to remember keeping them that way when turning them back in the day.

Gone to seed.

I have had some vac packed casters in the fridge for a while now, and some pva friendly hemp, again vac packed and have been thinking about the roach on the fading blue lagoon. A lot. Has a lot of draw for a water the size of a good football pitch and perhaps the pole would be a good way to hold  a bait just on or just off the bottom?

Couple extra bits purchased and the hedge mostly cut it was on the nice level platform swim with a good ledge just in reach of the really old glass LERC 6 metre jobbie. Line trapped with a length of silicon tube (mistake). Not sure if a flick tip or whip set up, one is to hand, the other just the depth and a short line meaning shipping several sections to net. Anyway, I had enough depth to go just longer than the penultimate section and unship the butt if required.

A 0.6g pole float, 0.5 g olivette stopped with a micro swivel and dropper on the hook link with  a #16 micro barbed Kamatsua hook . I can just about see to use a No.8 shot as a dropper as long as the cut is deep enough but fear I am near No. 6  territory now. Which does make a difference with such a fine bristle. You see so much of what is going on with the bait when you go that fine.

Caster doesn't weed out all the small stuff but certainly catches the eye of the better fish.

I did lose an eel when the hook knot slipped  (another casualty of failing eye sight even with the hook tier) but don't think I would have won  anyway given the vertical nature of the pole tip bend downwards. Then another sharp pull next put in and the whole rig had gone in a flash  I had only used one silicone tubing instead of two.. Lesson learnt. Must have been a tench or a mud pig.

This certainly helped with this hard pulling hybrid of well over a pound.

A very different head down fight this with this one and I knew straight away I did not want to loose it. 1.02 and a lovely last fish. Do think I might go for ready tied hook links for this sort of fishing when being accurate is much more of an advantage.

The boy done exceedingly good.

Probably my last trip up the A47 and the A6 to Loughborough, for a while anyway as middle Bureboy has only gone and done a 1st  in Chemistry. Well worth the extra hour stuck on the South Brink between Wisbech and Guyhuirn in a monsoon like deluge. And with a broken coil spring that I nursed there and back and then to King's Lynn the next day.

He's off to Sheffield  for a year to get his teaching qualification next. Best get the Charabanc back on the road for that. 

Down the  A140 and A12 today for a lovely lunch with my parents and brother, who has adopted the Gerard Depardieu look it seems.

Latitude schmatitude

The Bureboy Diaspora had all returned to the sacred earthen hearth for the weekend  but given a slough of despondency caused by the marsh ague it fell to me to collect the eldest from the station and 4 of us least affected headed eastwards (Suffolk) for the day. Passport control navigated we took the usual 6 hours to drive round Lowestoft and off the A12 at Wearham towards the home of Adnams brewery and distilleries.

Wherever you are in town the lighthouse is always looking over your shoulder it seems. No big brewery stack like the East End Truman chimney but sleek and elegant pipes from the distillery.

Would have been our early lunch choice but no room at this inn, even early doors. Wonder how long a rival Greene King pub would last before the dirty tricks and sabotage started?

This  bay had a certain sativa like quality about the leaves. Cook's little helper perhaps?

Now, this looks  like some likes like plastic flowers in a window box, low maintainence gardening and all that but they did move in the wind in a very realistic way. Perhaps they were made by a 3D printer. Or I had had some of Cooks' little helper. Purely for medicinal use Officer.

After an average lunch we took a tour of the charity shops and Southwold's only book shop. Amongst the yummy mummies and chinless husbands I had noticed several strangely attired women, all with wellies (brightly coloured of course) and tear drop eye make up and face sequins.  Ah, Latituders who had just popped out for a bit of shopping, that glamping stuff being so infra dig these days. Why glamp when you can rent a town house?

Not sure this street is particularly well represented at the polite festival happening just down the A12. Certainly not glampers anyway. Miserable gits.

Ah, a bit more like it and indeed, why consider life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat..

 Down to the pier, and probably one of the nicest piers there is. The bass were in too.

Stunning view either way Yes, the lighthouse is still keeping an eye on you.

Imagine exercise being so easy and pleasant.

It is quite tongue in cheek some of this stuff and the better for it I think.

Just time for a quick toe on the water and then home to the sick bay.

Schoolies

Day trip to Southwold yesterday.  Couple of chaps taking advantage of the rash of schoolies about. Most bites missed but they still had several little bars of dashing silver and spiny fins.

The long and winding road.

Took the slow road westbound the other day. Makes a change from the shorter and faster A148. Swung off just past Letheringsett and along the long flint wall bounding the parkland and the dammed Glaven that runs through  the Bayfield Estate. Home to an avenue of gunnera.

R

The dam that Bailey wrote he sat on just a few hours after a long and ultimately fruitless battle with a massive unseen Mediterranean conger.

Looping  round the Glaven flows under the red brick bridge at Wiveton before making it seaward at Cley next the Sea which it hasn't been for a long  time.

On the A149 and wending through the summer bottle neck that is Stiffkey, one time parish of the Vicar of Stiffkey who made it his education to ahem, save the souls of London's fallen and gin sodden women of the night. He was eaten by a lion in a cage eventually. Stiffkey is also the home of the Stukey Blue cockle. And divided by the Stiffkey River. which like the Glaven is one of Norfolk's 9 chalk streams.

Norfolk pastoral. Gorgeous when that little river leaves it's banks each winter too and spreads over the flood meadow. There are avocet on the scrapes downstream too.

Norfolk particularly is the home of flint, red brick and pantiles and of course the hollyhock. And the screamimg swifts.

Past Wells next the Sea (which like Cley isn't next anymore) and we are running along the miles of Norfolk red brick walls bounding the paladian and feudal servitude that is the Holkham Estate and with the inland Burnham's it's the start of miles and miles of Boden clad Bray Villes. One day TT the glorious North East diaspora will rise up and smite them to the ground...

A good place to start the Great Insurrection would be Burnham Overy Staithe TT. The man seen industriously scrubbing a mooring buoy heartily agreed with my observation (based on his tirade of invective and spittle) that he wasn't feeling the Range Rover Evoque load of ladies who lunch exercising their massive hounds in the creek.  He's one of the advance guard softening them up for when the Great Rage falls on the land.

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Just above the tidal confluence of another Norfolk chalk stream, the River Burn is divide round and under Burnham Overy Lower Mill.

Not much to see through the Polaroids in the main pool. Composing the abstract below in the main flush I caught a flash of mahogany and creamy white.

Time for some serious looking now and on with the CPL filter. And yes, spots and that useless adipose fin.

 Browns and at least two really serious rainbows

Back on the road and into serious BrayVille land as we hit Brancaster and it's Staithe.

 Found this classic North Norfolk Poppyland tableau just outside the Boden enclave. Truly stunning. Running red with the blood of the braying class come the Glorious Day.

Hunger called but baulked at the cost of an artisan burger in a yurt. What the feck are stealth chips?

Made do with some rather nice mackerel pate. But sea bass? Wild or not you are on the list for that heinous crime Mr. Fishmonger.

We are yet to determine what this is from. Very long..

Nice table. But £350 though.

As we hit nearly sunny Hunny we are into the distinctive carstone construction that marks an outcrop of the honey coloured rock that straddles the higher land  looking down on Lynn and the westward Fens and the Brecks. They are for future road trips.