Mill Cottage Eardiston - Teme, Thrips and Time Warps

There are decisions in life that one looks back upon with misty-eyed fondness, and there are decisions that cause the Wife to raise an eyebrow so sharply it threatens to detach from her face. 

Booking Mill Cottage on the River Teme, without engaging the underused decision-making portion of my brain, fell firmly into the latter category. In my defence, it was cheap “very cheap” ( a weekly shop in the Newey Household) and in the heat of a mid-week whim, that became the sole criterion for success.

Only later, once the confirmation email had already nestled smugly in my inbox, did the Wife remind me:

(a) “You’ve stayed there before, you plank, (was March 2010 apparently)

(b) “I vowed never to go again,” and

(c) “You’ve booked Utah bleeding Saints in Birmingham on Saturday with Steveo, remember, did you even catch any fish last time ?”

Ah yes. That, sh*t. The weekend, thus, was shaping up to be more convoluted than an eel knot on a cold morning.

Mill Cottage & Ben back in 2010

The cottage itself is a curious relic. A time capsule. A portal to a period when brown wallpaper was fashionable, electricity was optional, and furniture was apparently designed by someone who had only ever seen chairs described in writing. 

The décor appears not to have been updated since the late 1950s (I jest) possibly even since the Domesday Book, in which the mill was first mentioned. The monks of St Mary’s in Worcester might well have written, “Mol De Medewye bring your own firewood and expect a few spiders.”

The history is genuinely impressive. Medieval monks, meadows, a seventeen-foot waterwheel, and the Moore family milling away for generations. 

But standing in the living room, staring at a TV the size of a large lunchbox with no HDMI port, I found myself pondering a modern mystery:

Why, in the name of Saint Barbel, have the owners not spent thirty quid on a tin of paint? , a couple of hundred on a decent TV, and update the furniture. 

A few upgrades and they could charge double. Triple, even. As it stands, the place feels like the sort of summerhouse a 50's eccentric might have used for smoking a pipe, writing letters to The Times, and accidentally inventing tetanus.

But there we were. Me and Sam. The boy was off on a teacher training day his, not mine and he was positively buzzing about fishing from the cottage’s garden and having a curry. A proper stretch of Teme too, the sort of water that looks gorgeous even when you know full well you’re going to blank harder than Rachel from Accounts who forgot her calculator. (AGAIN)

Complicating matters, Thursday night I had to sprint straight from work to a Fatboy Slim gig in Coventry because obviously the best preparation for a weekend of fishing is an evening of shouting, sweating, and pretending I’m not too old for this sort of thing. 

Which left me roughly four and a half minutes to prepare the tackle. I flung together a selection of rods, reels, floats, feeders, baits, and things that appeared to be fishing-related but might actually have been household items.

The plan, such as it was:

Arrive Friday at 2.00pm. Fish. Curry and a pint in Tenbury Wells for dinner (still a little run down, bless it). Fish much of Saturday. Dash home. Utah Saints. Collapse.

Phew.

Now tucked into the north-west corner of Worcestershire a spot so politely unassuming that even the sat-nav clears its throat before announcing it lies Tenbury Wells only a short drive away from the Mill Cottage. It’s the quiet achiever of market towns, the sort that doesn’t bother puffing out its chest because it knows full well you’ll fall for it eventually… like a trout mesmerised by a suspiciously shiny spinner.

Once a Victorian spa resort (because in those days everyone thought standing in sulphurous water would cure literally anything), Tenbury now lounges elegantly by the River Teme, framed by hop fields, cider-apple orchards, and countryside so wide-skied you could pitch a blimp in it and no one would bat an eyelid. Except maybe Dave, the bloke who watches everything from his front step and has opinions about cloud shapes. 

The Georgian high street is all indie shops and artisan markets, the sort that make you accidentally buy chutney you absolutely do not need. A 1937 regal Cinema, a glorious art deco number that shows arthouse films, jazz nights, and occasionally a movie so obscure I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t just a screensaver. 

Then there are the Pump Rooms, a slice of Victorian eccentricity that looks like the sort of building you’d expect a time-travelling vicar to emerge from, clutching a pamphlet on the spiritual dangers of trousers. Food-wise, you’re sorted: cracking coffee, cakes large enough to be classified as architecture, curry houses, pubs, jobs a good'un. oh and even a Michelin-style restaurant lurking nearby, poised to surprise you with foam. There is always foam !!. 

Tenbury blends affordability, friendliness and proper countryside charm, with scenery so postcard-pretty you half expect a sheep to wander through holding a tiny enamel teapot. Just make sure you do your flood-homework this is a river town, after all, and the Teme occasionally likes to remind everyone who’s boss....

...you see one big problem !! most people in the Tenbury Wells cannot afford insurance the premiums are too high because flooding is so frequent (7 times in 2 years in recent apparently). Businesses and homeowners have adapted accordingly, placing electrical sockets high up, not storing things on the floor and making makeshift flood defences of their own.

The river hadn't flooded the town thankfully during Storm Claudia however temperatures had plummeted faster than the country's confidence in the Labour Party, and frankly expectations were low. Very low. “Bottom-of-the-Teme-in-winter” low. But it wasn’t really about the fish. It was about some proper father-son bonding time, a chance to unwind, and an opportunity for me to once again question every logistical choice I’ve made in adulthood.

And, if the Teme fancied being generous, maybe just maybe a fish or two would find its way into the landing net rather than laughing at us from the murky depths. 

Stranger Things (new series out very soon) have happened. After all, I’d managed to book a medieval mill, a Norman-era historical site, and see two dance-music legends in the space of forty-eight hours.

If that isn’t proof that miracles occur, I don’t know what is.

Now It was one of those mornings where even the river looked like it wanted to stay in bed, still sulking after the recent flood and charging through the valley like it had somewhere better to be. 

Sam and I had barely said our hellos to the owners before we were poking around the swims outside the mill cottage, pretending to be seasoned explorers rather than two blokes who were really wondering where the least treacherous place to fall in might be. 

The BAA stretch looked promising until we realised that accessing most of the pegs would require the agility of a mountain goat and the insurance policy of a stuntman; the banks were so slippery that one wrong step would’ve had me auditioning for a You’ve Been Framed compilation. 

So, with dignity intact well, mostly we retreated to the mill cottage like the sensible anglers we occasionally pretend to be. 

We gave the slack by the weir a good go into dusk, but the fish were having none of it, probably laughing at us from somewhere deep in the turbo-charged current, so it was off to the pub for morale repair and then a curry for medicinal purposes. 

The frost, meanwhile, clung to the ground like an over-keen limpet, the big hill downstream blocking out what little sun there was, and the water sat at a balmy 5.5 degrees, which is apparently ideal if you’re a penguin. 

Morning came, brutally, and with it the maggot feeder approach tiny hooks, dainty tactics and me squinting at red maggots like a jeweller evaluating gemstones, while Sam tried his best to appear enthusiastic despite the weather reminding him why he prefers fishing in conditions that don’t resemble a survival documentary. 

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for a grayling to slip up, confirming that something out there was still alive, and between showers, shivers, and the sort of toe-curling wind that makes you question your hobbies, we scraped together eight or nine more grayling and a couple of trout from the weir pool slack that clearly mistook the lobworm for an all-you-can-eat buffet sign.

By 3:30pm we were trudging back to the car, damp, cold, smelling faintly of maggots, but victorious in the sense that we hadn’t blanked, and I shot off home so I could go see Utah Saints DJ’ing, because apparently I am, against all common sense, still pretending I’m 25. After all that, I need a rest—but knowing me, I’ll be back on another river next week, complaining just as loudly and loving every second of it.