Monday 27 December 2021

New for '22

 

 

Greetings!

 

Here is what is new in '22! I know we all love the old favourites, some of which have been part of the Fishing Breaks story since I first opened our doors over 30 years ago, but every year I do like to bring you something not only new, but different.

 

 

West Wycombe Park

Main house top left. Boathouse on left. Music Temple on right.

 

I think you’ll agree West Wycombe Park ticks both those boxes. It is just 29 miles as the crow flies from central London with fishing on the pellucid Buckinghamshire Wye and lake designed by landscape architect Thomas Cook in the form of a swan. Come on your own. Bring a friend. Or organise a party taking lunch in the Music Temple on the island.

 

Plus, I have a new Fish Camp location on the River Wylye. The Weekend Chalkstream School at Bullington Manor. Locks Keeper's Cottage on the River Itchen.

 

 

Weekend Chalkstream School

 

When one day is never enough join us for a weekend at Bullington Manor.

 

The school, led by our patient and knowledgeable guides, is the chance for intense mornings and relaxing afternoons. The School is limited to just eight and runs in early May.

 

More details here ....

 

 

Hill Deverill Fish Camp

 

Few fishing trips beat those that allow you to wake up to the sound of the river and fall asleep to the smell of a campfire as the summer darkness closes in with flitting bats for company.

 

At the head of the Wylye Valley, Hill Deverill is as perfect a stream and location as you are ever likely to find for a night of camping and two days of fishing. Ideal for a family.

 

More details here ....

 

 

West Wycombe Park

 

If you’ve ever seen The Crown, you will certainly recognise the 18th century Palladian mansion that overlooks the River Wye and the lake of West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire.

 

Fed from the Chilterns Hills the water here is exceptionally clear, even by chalkstream standards.

 

Fishing on the river and lake, the latter from either the bank or a boat, is available on Tuesdays and Fridays. You can even book lunch for a party in the magnificent Music Temple on the lake island.

 

More details here ....

 

 

Lock Keeper's Cottage

 

Qing Ya Xi is one of our most popular beats on the River Itchen and now the owner is just completing a full refurbishment of the Lock Keepers’ Cottages in the grounds.

 

Sleeping seven and designed for indoor/outdoor living bedside the river Lock Keeper's Cottage is available, with fishing, for 3 and 7 night stays.

 

More details here ....

 


Friday 17 December 2021

Are lobsters sentient?

 

Greetings!

 

I have avoided writing about the Sentience Bill for most of this year because, frankly, I have struggled to understand it whilst knowing, in my heart of hearts, that the implications for fishing, and probably country sports in general, are potentially bad. But, as the Bill has almost completed its passage through the House of Lords to shortly head to the House of Commons to become law, I tried to get a handle on it.

 

The origin of this bill was our departure from the EU. Lobby groups with axes to grind saw this as an opportunity to make out that Britain was about to become a pit of animal cruelty despite numerous pieces of effective legislation passed by Westminster that remain, putting us well ahead of EU minimum standards.

 

In short, this was a Bill we never needed but are about to get as the government caved to the confected cruelty view by starting with the Action Plan for Animal Welfare published by the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs in May.

 

 

The 20-page Action Plan feels more like a children’s story book than an actual serious attempt at policy making such is the predilection for the cute pictures of kittens, cuddly rhetoric and, of all things a rhino on the front cover. And it ranges all over the place from sharks in far distant oceans to elephants on the African savannah. But when you cut through it all the government purpose is clearly stated, “our commitment to recognise in law the sentience of animals.”

 

When it comes to the word ‘sentience’ I struggled to find a universal definition. Check it out; you’ll find subtle differences in the Webster, Collins or numerous dictionaries. The best I have found, and sorry it is not a one liner, is from D.M. Broom, in the 2019 Encyclopaedia of Animal Behaviour.

 

“Sentience means having the capacity to have feelings. This requires a level of awareness and cognitive ability. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings in a wide range of nonhuman animals. The abilities necessary for sentience appear at a certain stage in humans, as in other species, and brain damage can result in those abilities being lost so not all humans are sentient. Sentient animals include fish and other vertebrates, as well as some molluscs and decapod crustaceans. Most people today consider that their moral obligations extend to many animal species. Moral decisions about abortion, euthanasia, and the various ways we protect animals should take into account the research findings about sentience.”

 

So, here is the thing about the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill - it doesn’t actually set down in law any animal welfare standards or policies. Everything you have recently read about the ending of the transport of cattle to the continent for slaughter, the ban on the import of hunting trophies or microchipping cats was enacted under other laws or regulations. 

 

 

All (I use the word advisedly) this Bill does in its three short pages is to instruct the Secretary of State to establish and maintain a committee called the Animal Sentience Committee to check any government policy is being or has been formulated or implemented with all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings.

 

As to what is an ‘animal’ the Bill is clear in defining it as anything with a backbone bar homo sapiens, cephalopods (squid, octopus etc) and decapods (lobsters, prawns etc). There is an additional clause which permits the Secretary of State to amend the legal definition so as to bring invertebrates of any description within the meaning of the word ‘animal’.

 

Clauses of the Bill go on to ensure that this Animal Sentience Committee has sharp teeth. No Secretary of State will be able to ignore its report. If the Committee decides a government policy is ‘adverse’ it will be a brave Minister who refuses to change it. Who will be on this Committee and on what terms? Well, that will lie entirely within the gift of the Secretary of State.

 

Much of the anger against the Bill, in that passive/aggressive way debates get angered in the House of Lords, has been directed at who the members of the committee might be and the likelihood of mission creep once this Bill becomes law. We have seen it already. No mention of lobsters was in the original conception of the bill and they never had a mention on the Action Plan for Animal Welfare. But there they are now, front and centre.

 

It seems to me vanishingly unlikely that extreme animal activist groups (I refuse to correlate them with the word welfare) or anyone else with vested interest for that matter, will let the opportunities offered by the new law pass by unexploited. I suspect for a while fish and fishing will be left alone but eventually our turn will come. And who knows what form that might take. Maybe something out of left field like the transportation of live fish. A challenge to the practice of catch and release, already outlawed in Switzerland and Germany. Or perhaps we’ll use it to our advantage to end legal sewage dumping. I’m not hopeful on the latter by the way.

 

The Bill, which began its legislative life in the Lords will now head to the Commons where we can only hope that it will be amended to death as it passes through its three readings, committee, and report stage. At this point hope is really all we have; Steerpike in The Spectator, described government resistance to all and any proposed Lords amendments as being rebuffed with ‘kamikaze sang-froid’. It will take a mighty effort to derail this legislative locomotive, but we’ll have a go in the New Year.

 

I hesitate to say the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is a can of worms but, due to the way it is drafted, that might soon indeed be too cruel a fate for our earthy friends.

 

 

Christmas & New Year office hours

 

We are going to be taking a bit of a break this year so we’ll be shutting up shop at 5pm on Thursday December 23rd and will reopen at 9am Tuesday January 4th. However, we’ll still be answering emails most days albeit with maybe a little less alacrity than usual!

 

As regards bookings the diaries will all go live online on Monday December 27th when you will also be able to redeem vouchers online.

 

In the meantime feel free to call, email or go online to buy a voucher for Christmas delivery or chat with us about your fishing wish list for 2022.

 

 

 

Quiz

The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter.

 

It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.

 

1)     On this day in 1903 the Wright brothers made the first sustained motorized aircraft flight. What was the name of the plane?

 

2)     In which century did Boxing Day become a public holiday?

 

3)     The spouse of which monarch is credited with setting up the first English Christmas tree?

 

 

 

That was the year that was

 

2021 was a jolly merry-go-round relative to the rollercoaster of 2020. Yes, I could count the number of overseas visitors on a single hand, but the void was more than filled by the continuing surge in interest in all things outdoors.

 

Being pinged by track and trace alerts probably provided the most difficult conversations of the year whilst the happiest were those that welcomed back all of you who had rolled over from last year.

 

Politically, aside from our internal spats about stocking, fishing largely stayed out of the headlines which is mostly a good thing. The Mortimer & Whitehouse series, which comes sideways at our strange pastime, has provided a PR boost which I haven’t know since the Brad Pitt film A River Runs through It and before that, Hugh Miles’ masterpiece on the BBC A Passion for Angling. However, I do see trouble ahead with the upcoming sentience legislation as I have written above.

 

However, I don’t see any such troubles for the much-vaunted Environment Bill that received Royal Assent on 9th November which will turn government officials giddy as the water industry runs rings around them. The only comfort I take from the passage of this feeble bit of legislation is that river and coastal pollution is now firmly on the public radar having broken out from being a niche concern of surfers, wild swimmers, and anglers.

 

On the chalkstreams we were truly blessed with the second of two wet years: no lack-of-rain induced sleepless nights for me until this November. Hatches came and went as Mother Nature intended, the only downer being a stuttering Mayfly period that only really got going in short bursts.

 

As ever, your feedback gave me a new window through which to look in on the world of fly fishing. Aside my favourite quote of the year, “I never like paying! ;-)” on which I think we can all agree, I see a definitive trend for more appreciation for the healing, if that is the right word, properties for a day on the river that has emerged in the past two pandemic years. Though few of us have entirely lost to the urge to catch the fact of just being there, despite the frustrations of cussed fish, is enough to make any day on the river a day well spent.  

 

On that, which I hope is a happy thought, let us wrap up this year. I’ll be back with my next Newsletter on 14th of January so until then, from all of us at Nether Wallop Mill and those out on the rivers, thank you for your support and kind words.

 

Have a great Christmas and all the best for 2022. 



 

Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:

 

1)     Kitty Hawk

2)     19th century. 1871

3)     George III. His wife Queen Charlotte set up the first known English tree at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, in December 1800.