Charlie was born and bought up near Thirsk in north
Yorkshire. Never much minded with books he was, by 13 years old, already
helping on a local shoot and poaching on the local beck. He jokes that he
was a well-mannered poacher, practicing the delicate art of upstream
worming. God’s Own Country may well have remained his home for the
remainder of his life but for an advert his Mother saw in the paper for a
course in Shoot, River and Sporting Management at Sparsholt College in
Hampshire. This was back in the days when a Sparsholt course was down and
dirty; a practical year that was way different to the three-year Ba(Hons)
of today.
Finishing with a Distinction Charlie was still just 16 years
old, but he lucked out when beating on the Broadlands Estate as a Saturday
job which landed him his first river keeper position working under Harry
Grass back in the era when Lord Mountbatten was alive, and Royalty were
regular visitors to the River Test. At £45 a week Charlie thought he was
doing alright until he met a pal working as a game keeper in France, on a
10,000 acre estate, an hour north of Paris for a £100 a week plus a house.
Got any jobs he asked? Well, yes. So, with his new wife Gina Charlie, only
fluent in Yorkshire, headed to France. But after two happy years as a
budding Francophile, for personal reasons and the death of the owner, they
returned to England to take the job at Compton Chamberlayne just past his
21st birthday.
What’s different, I asked Charlie, forty years on?
Unequivocally he says it is the state of the river. More dirty water. Less
varied fly life. An absence of ranunculus. A dearth of rising fish.
In short, the Nadder is less like the chalkstream that it should be, or the
river Charlie recalls from his early years. He also rues the passing of the
characters who used to fish though, having heard his tales of bare bottoms
gyrating where they should not, maybe a less characterful fishery is no bad
thing.
The changing of the guard is always a sad moment especially
when, if like me, you have known someone for nearly all their watch.
However, the family connection remains. Tom, Gina and Charlie’s 25-year-old
son, is the successor moving into Dinton Mill Cottage, the house in which
he was born, as the new river keeper.
We wish Gina, Charlie and Tom all the very best in their
shared new adventures.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment