Marlborough to Reading, the Kennet flows in several beds and has innumerable side-streams and carriers. In places the valley is the best part of half a mile wide. But nowhere, I think, is it wider than in the Wilderness between Halfway and Kintbury, which is a mile long and perhaps 600 yards broad. It is thick woodland, virtually pathless, and marshy at all times of the year; the haunt of herons, grebes, water rails, teal, shelduck in season, spotted woodpeckers, reed warblers and grasshopper warblers. Otters there certainly were, but there wasnât much chance of coming on one, for it is simply not practicable to penetrate or wander about in that dense, boggy place.
I was still too little to do much in the way of specialized bird-watching, though I enjoyed seeing the moorhens, coots and swans on the open water. What struck me most forcibly on that first visit - the first of many - was watching the trout rising to the mayfly: and Iâm pretty certain that that was what my father had brought me down to see. I saw my first trout for myself, without prompting. It was close in under the bank that we were walking up, and I had hardly noticed it before it startled and shot away into deep water.
My father pointed silently to a hawthorn bush overhanging the opposite bank of the river. I watched for perhaps half a minute, and was beginning to wonder what I was supposed to be looking at when the surface was broken, with a kind of unhurried intentness, by a rising trout. I saw the rings go radiating outwards and the whole circle of the rise float downstream until, diminishing little by little, it died away on the flow.
âIsnât
he
a splendid chap?â said my father. âHeâll do it again in a minute, I expect.â
He did, and this time I watched the mayfly drifting down on the surface, and anticipated the moment when the trout would rise to gulp it down. We remained sitting on the bank for perhaps ten minutes or more, and I found a point of vantage from which I could actually see the trout beneath the water, veering from side to side with flickering of its tail, sometimes allowing itself to be carried down a few feet before recovering its old position, yet always on the watch for the next mayfly. When it rose I could see the dark spots along its side, and once the dorsal fin broke surface as it turned to follow a fly a couple of feet downstream before taking it.
There were other footbridges - a bit out of repair and precarious, some of them â and on these we stood and looked down into the weed and the bed of the stream. My father showed me the difference between a grayling and a trout, and I learnt to recognize the chequered pattern of the graylingâs high, long-based dorsal fin and the characteristic look of a grayling rise, different from that of a trout â or of a chub, for that matter. I remember I had a little, white, two-bladed penknife which someone had recently given me, and that while standing on one of the bridges I unluckily happened to drop it into the river. It must be down there still.
We took to going to the Halfway Wilderness quite often, for my father, though not himself a particularly keen fisherman (I expect he could have fished it if he had wanted to), saw that I was elated by the river and wished for nothing better than to walk the mile up its length to Wawcott and back on a sunny afternoon. One hot, still evening of high summer, we came upon a fisherman throwing a fly. This turned out to be a friend of my father, a celebrated fisherman named Dr Mottram. I watched fascinated as he splashlessly shot the light, delicate line and leader straight out to what seemed to me an incredible distance, let them drift down, recovered and re-cast. My father showed me the best place to stand when someone is casting - just behind his left shoulder. While we were there Dr Mottram rose, played and landed a trout, which he insisted on giving to us. He showed me how to pass reeds through the
I was still too little to do much in the way of specialized bird-watching, though I enjoyed seeing the moorhens, coots and swans on the open water. What struck me most forcibly on that first visit - the first of many - was watching the trout rising to the mayfly: and Iâm pretty certain that that was what my father had brought me down to see. I saw my first trout for myself, without prompting. It was close in under the bank that we were walking up, and I had hardly noticed it before it startled and shot away into deep water.
My father pointed silently to a hawthorn bush overhanging the opposite bank of the river. I watched for perhaps half a minute, and was beginning to wonder what I was supposed to be looking at when the surface was broken, with a kind of unhurried intentness, by a rising trout. I saw the rings go radiating outwards and the whole circle of the rise float downstream until, diminishing little by little, it died away on the flow.
âIsnât
he
a splendid chap?â said my father. âHeâll do it again in a minute, I expect.â
He did, and this time I watched the mayfly drifting down on the surface, and anticipated the moment when the trout would rise to gulp it down. We remained sitting on the bank for perhaps ten minutes or more, and I found a point of vantage from which I could actually see the trout beneath the water, veering from side to side with flickering of its tail, sometimes allowing itself to be carried down a few feet before recovering its old position, yet always on the watch for the next mayfly. When it rose I could see the dark spots along its side, and once the dorsal fin broke surface as it turned to follow a fly a couple of feet downstream before taking it.
There were other footbridges - a bit out of repair and precarious, some of them â and on these we stood and looked down into the weed and the bed of the stream. My father showed me the difference between a grayling and a trout, and I learnt to recognize the chequered pattern of the graylingâs high, long-based dorsal fin and the characteristic look of a grayling rise, different from that of a trout â or of a chub, for that matter. I remember I had a little, white, two-bladed penknife which someone had recently given me, and that while standing on one of the bridges I unluckily happened to drop it into the river. It must be down there still.
We took to going to the Halfway Wilderness quite often, for my father, though not himself a particularly keen fisherman (I expect he could have fished it if he had wanted to), saw that I was elated by the river and wished for nothing better than to walk the mile up its length to Wawcott and back on a sunny afternoon. One hot, still evening of high summer, we came upon a fisherman throwing a fly. This turned out to be a friend of my father, a celebrated fisherman named Dr Mottram. I watched fascinated as he splashlessly shot the light, delicate line and leader straight out to what seemed to me an incredible distance, let them drift down, recovered and re-cast. My father showed me the best place to stand when someone is casting - just behind his left shoulder. While we were there Dr Mottram rose, played and landed a trout, which he insisted on giving to us. He showed me how to pass reeds through the
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