Shootin’ and fishin’ Sunday

Continuing the self-sufficient-ish theme of the weekend we went up to Tom’s for a day of fishing and shooting. The original plan had been to get there early enough to join them for some actual shooting but we had to go and collect a washing machine in the morning instead. My Dad has inherited a house which he is renting out to a tenant in 2 weeks time so is frantically trying to get ready. A new kitchen and bathroom have already been fitted complete with appliances and he is now decorating the whole house. There was a washing machine there that had only been a few months old but the new tenant has their own washing machine so Dad had offered it to us as our’s (which was a wedding present from my parents 9 years ago, has moved to Manchester and back and been very, very well used averaging a load a day for most of those 9 years) is on it’s way out.

While we were there having a look round the house we also got some tools from the shed (a second fork, rake and rotovator) and a hose (not quite long enough to reach from our allotment to the water tap but at least we’ll only need a length of hose rather than all the attachments). Felt a bit odd picking over a dead person’s things although Mum and Dad have cleared the rest of the house very speedily and don’t seem to feel nearly so strange about it. Infact the whole thing is really quite mysterious to me but that’s their concern rather than any of my business… We arranged to see them on Tuesday (Mum for the day, Dad to join us to go and watch the kids’ swimming lessons and then both of them for dinner) and headed home to swap over cars and go to Tom’s.

It’s actually Tom’s parentss’ house but Tom and Ingrid are housesitting while his parents are on holiday. It is a big, rambling house with even bigger, even more rambling garden – several acres with 3 paddocks, a sandschool and stables, huge vegetable garden and greenhouses, loads of outbuildings and a stream and two huge lakes in some woodland at the very bottom. Gorgeous :). They are very old money ‘posh’ and it all feels very much like stepping into a Jilly Cooper novel (without all the sex ;)) spending time there. There are dogs, horses, chickens and although Tom and Ingrid and all their friends are childless (so far) they all adore kids and Davies and Scarlett are in their element up there.

The children disappeared with the dogs as soon as we arrived while Ady and I helped with preparing lunch – home made burgers (two varieties), marinaded chicken and lamb all cooked on the barbecue. We finished with pancakes served with ice cream, honey from Tom’s Mum’s bees (the most delicious honey I’ve had in years, tasted just like honey I used to have as a child, so much flavour), some homemade strawberry and chili jam I’d taken with us, raspberries from the garden and nasturtians for fun. All washed down with far too much chilled wine to be drunk at lunchtime without feeling a bit wobbly for the rest of the afternoon 😳 .

We gathered up fishing rods and reels and headed down to the lake. Via the chickens and the two 4-week old chicks under a brooder. With just a quick glance I identified them as one hen and one roo – we’ll see if I’m right but I’m very confident I am. Amazing how I knew zero about chickens a year ago and now am able to talk quite confidently about them. Someone asked me something the other day about chickens and I knew the answer :).

The lakes are man-made and two seperate areas. One is deeper than the other and both have islands in the middle although only one island is accessible by a bridge. There are rowing boats for going out on them and a stream flows through the bottom of the land. The whole area is surrounded by really old established trees of all sorts. It’s beautiful 🙂

I’d never done any fishing before and neither had the children so Ady and Tom showed us how to use the rods, bait them up and cast them. Another of their workmate’s had arrived by then and he is a fairly serious fisher so he set himself up on the other side of the lake to do some proper fishing. Ady did a lot of nightfishing in his youth and often talks fondly of it and wants to take Davies at some point. I’m not at all sure Davies is quiet or patient enough yet and equally not sure that Ady is good enough at letting Davies find out errors for himself rather than taking over – yesterday demonstrated that a little but interestingly without me saying a word Ady had concluded for himself that he’d been too hands-on with Davies and caused him to lose interest. It’s a lesson it’s taken me a long time to learn but he really is best given some basic instruction and left to find his own way with most things. He’d never be ready to learn a musical instrument for example as he’d need way too much instruction which he is very resistant to.

I quite enjoyed it although I’m not big on sitting around doing very little which is what fishing seems to be largely about – I’m more about instant gratification ;). Davies spent some time collecting conkers with Ingrid , Scarlett did lots of dashing about between people fishing to check their progress and I did lots of taking photos of beautiful reflections 🙂

Sam (the other workmate) caught a tiddler so the children had a close look at that before it was thrown back in

Then Tom brought out his gun for the children to have a go with. I hate toy guns but I had had a go at shooting a real gun by the time I was Davies’ age as my Dad has always had guns around from his childhood (very securely locked away from us kids of course) and showed Frazer and I how to use and respect them. Ady worked in gamekeeping for a while when he was younger so knows plenty about guns and shooting. This was a little 410 shotgun but still had an almighty kickback to it. Tom showed the children all the various component parts, explained what was in the cartridges (we bought one home to cut open and show the kids later) and explained how it all worked, then showed them how to shoot with it. They both had a couple of goes – Davies took the kickback for his second go just to see how very powerful it can be. I had a go and Ady had a couple of goes; all just shooting at the top of a tree. Next time we’re going to try some clay pigeon shooting with them.

We were all called back to the lake then as Sam had finally caught a decent sized fish, a mirror carp. It was too heavy for the kids to hold but they had a really good close look


then it was released into the other lake as they are trying to populate that one with fish too

That re-inspired the rest of us to try some more fishing and this time Sam gave some weights so we could try lower in the water and some decent bait (we’d been using bread that was falling apart and off the hook in the water). Scarlett had a go at some fly fishing with Tom too

but nothing more was caught and we started to get feasted on by the midges so returned to the house for a cup of tea before heading for home.

We got home around 730pm so the kids had a bath and tea before heading to bed, very tired, around 9pm. I had a bath and the feeling of not being ‘quite right’ that had started to come over me on the way home got worse and I couldn’t face dinner so went off to bed myself before 10pm. I slept through and woke feeling fine this morning so obviously I was just worn out from such an outdoorsy, action packed weekend. Very nice though 🙂