Appledore – Poppers and Ponses

I had to get my head down at work prior to this holiday, you see a cup holder had to be designed quick sharpish for a buck property for a client I am providing studio engineering support for. From the sketch from the mind of a madman, in to CAD in two days. It was a relatively complex design to, with articulating flaps, rotary dampers and buttons. I'd not designed one for ages so was quite nice getting ones head down.

Not a bad effort either, me thinks, ok the modelling wasn't parametric but hey, needs must, just needed to get a CAD model out quick for quote. Good thing is the design is divorced from the part it has to ultimately assembly to.

So if if it didn't work straight off once the rapid prototypes had arrived and it was assembled there was some fettling time to get it to work properly, if there were still problems then it wouldn't be shown, end of.

Nothing lost, nothing gained....

So headphones on, head down, Mixcloud and the Wifi battered.

The best mix out of the many,

Geju's from the 2017 Burning Man Festival,  my sort of repetitive beats....

Jobs a good'un, work complete....

The weather looked like it couldn’t be more different for this family trip down to North Devon, you see August last year we ventured down to Tamarisk Esturary View and it was a week of shorts donned, sun cream and cold beer.

This lovely bungalow backs onto the tidal Estuary of the Rivers Taw and Torridge and has some great views, particularly when the tide is going out and the sun is setting. The accommodation has privacy and has direct access from the garden to the coastal path and foreshore, even has its own look out at the bottom of the garden. (Shed)

We enjoyed the trip so much we booked up again…

The outlook you see was meant to be very mixed bag indeed, a big storm was rolling in on the Saturday because of a low pressure system from the Atlantic and rain, well lots if it apparently….

Waves, swells and wakes, well, they would be as big as houses….

So less sand would be likely be less trodden but with some nice scenic walking planned at the Tarr Steps clapper bridge and the River Barle in Exmoor and to Heddons’s Mouth I was looking forward to this trip.

But then as Danny put it, Michael Fish Syndrome seems to taint many intended trips out, you see with Metcheck, BBC weather, the Met Office and Accuweather, all seems to have different levels of inaccurate weather, nothing really can be planned properly these days.

Just got to pack for most eventualities such the uselessness of the meteorologists….

It’s October for God’s sake, the Daily Mail reported the day before we went

‘Surf's up! Waves up to 34 FEET high set to smash into Britain this weekend as Atlantic storm brings 50mph winds, heavy rain, flooding and even power cuts

Forecasters warn of flooding to homes, power cuts and delays to road, rail, air and ferry transport, Intense low pressure system will bring a swathe of strong winds over southern areas on Saturday with wave swells approaching 35ft that could strike the South West coast of England at 9am on Saturday.

Bunch of tarts these media lot are, then again anything to sell papers or to get the websites hits up to increase the advertising revenue….

For this holiday, obviously I brought a rod, (stupid question). You see last time on the last day of the holiday before I snapped my lure rod, I caught a bass on a popping frog and I loved the method so much, I decided to properly gear up for it.

So it was out with the Savage Gear lure rod, and proper popping lure I’d bought, got to spend my money on something haven’t I.

I’d hopefully cram a few short sessions in, I couldn’t be closer to the water, well when the tide was high anyway.

I was avidly looking at the tide times when we arrived….

Ok it was windy, very windy in fact, but storm Brian disappeared as soon as it arrived. The problem was for a few days the water was very coloured indeed, so maybe bait would have been the better option. But me and Sam stuck to the task in hand and went about trying to winkle out a bass.

I used the pop queen on the most past which is 105mm and 28 grams, it's a kind of bullet shape which made it a cracking casting lure. The slow erratic retrieve creates plenty of surface disturbance whilst a faster retrieve will make it dive just below the surface. When allowed to rest the pop queen sits its tale down and when given a sharp pull the cupped face will 'pop' when it dives in to the water.

Cast after cast, for a few mornings, nothing was doing at all, the bass were either not that, or not feeding. It was still coloured with visibility poor throughout the week.

Sam got bored, "Dad are we ACTUALLY going to catch anything"

"That's fishing for you Son"

"Fancy a carp lake the weekend"

"No Dad, can we go to the river"

A pub crawl in Appledore with my brother with two of the pubs having an open Mike night, it finished off a cracking week, lots of sea air, good food and a belly busting copious amount of the local beer.


My favourite, well, probably the dark 'Beast of Exmoor" that was 6.6% ( I think)

The fishing well, all a bit Mehhhhhhh !!!