Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.41

There’s something rather poetic, if not mildly tragic, about standing on the banks of a river that’s both alive and angry at the same time. You could say I brought the weather on myself  maybe those raving, tinnitus-inducing nights of old summoned something from the ether, like a rain dance performed with too much enthusiasm and too little rhythm. 

The beats of Dennis the Menace & Double Doves still echo faintly somewhere in the back of my head repetitive, relentless, the kind that seem to vibrate through your ribcage and somehow rearrange your kidneys. The Midlands version of tribal calling, only instead of summoning sunshine and serenity, we’ve got flood warnings and temporary traffic lights.

The Midlands, blog readers, is wet. Properly wet. The sort of wet that seeps into your bones, your boots, and even your plans. The sort that makes you question why you ever thought moving closer to the river was a good idea. But when you’re a syndicate member, and your peg is practically shouting your name every time the clouds break, you do what any self-respecting river botherer does you clock off work early and attempt to outfox the Coventry traffic. Easier said than done.

Now, I start work early. Crack of dawn sort of early. My commute, at least in theory, is a respectable seventeen miles, twenty minutes of mostly tolerable road. In practice though, the return journey can be anything from forty minutes to a full hour of grinding frustration a long, exhaust-huffing parade of brake lights and bad tempers.

Between the roadworks, temporary traffic lights, and the never-ending HS2 saga (which, by the look of it, will still be “under construction” by the time I’m old and grey(er)), it’s become a test of patience and lung capacity. The sheer volume of CO₂ those poor commuters are pumping out daily could probably power the International Space Station for a week.

So yes, leaving at 4:00pm felt like a small victory. I managed to pull up to the stretch just as the bats began to twitch in the treeline  that sweet spot where the light starts to fade but there’s still enough glow to get the rods out without fumbling like a blindfolded magician. The syndicate stretch, bless it, makes life easier. No long hauls or muddy slogs. Just park up behind the peg, kettle on, and bask in that smug sense of convenience.

Now, I treated myself and I use the word treated loosely to one of those Temu LED courtesy light upgrades. “Loss-leading” is an understatement. The thing could guide aircraft if angled incorrectly. Flick it on and I half expect to see Richard Dreyfuss appear from the reeds humming the Close Encounters theme. Still, it’s handy. Bright enough to see what I’m doing, but also bright enough to make every moth in Warwickshire think I’m hosting a disco.

I opted for simple tactics no fancy rigs, no bags of voodoo powders or exotic pastes that smell like a trawler’s bilge. Just a pungent krill groundbait, a stinky Robin Red pellet, and a wrap of paste to round it all off. The swim choice? Barbara’s old haunt. She of the bend in the willow and the tale of the one that got caught but never forgotten. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this river, it’s that chub love a bit of nostalgia.

 The river, mind you, was absolutely banging through. One of those proper restless moods where everything’s in motion twigs, leaves, whole branches doing the hokey-cokey midstream. 

Every ten minutes I was recasting, clearing the debris, muttering under my breath like some sort of riverbank priest offering up sacrifices to the gods of flow and fortune. Huge rafts of junk were coming down, and my line looked like it had developed its own mossy ecosystem by the time I reeled in.

The bites, or lack thereof, didn’t help matters. One solitary chub pull that half-hearted pluck that makes you sit up straight and hold your breath, only for it to amount to absolutely nothing. 

The sort of tease that keeps you there another hour even when you know it’s pointless. Still, I persevered, as we all do.

At least the new Trakker Scout chair lived up to its billing. By god, it’s comfortable. The kind of comfort that makes you question why you’ve been perching on glorified ironing boards all these years. 

Now my restless legs a legacy of too many stationary commutes gave up protesting for once. I could’ve stayed there all night, listening to the water and pretending the world beyond the bank didn’t exist.

How Drennan’s James Denison he of the 40 Rivers Challenge fame manages to sit biteless for hours on end is beyond me. The man’s got the patience of a monk. I’d have had the bite alarms out by now, flashing like a slot machine and probably frightening every fish within a mile radius. But no, not tonight. Tonight was quiet, calm, almost meditative in its frustration.

No northern lights to report either though half the internet seems to think they were visible somewhere north of Birmingham. The sky stayed its usual murky shade of Midlands grey, heavy and brooding, but somehow still comforting. It didn’t rain, which was a small mercy, and even though I blanked, there was a certain peace in that. 

Sometimes it’s not about the catching  it’s about the being there. The slow rhythm of the river, the hiss of the wind in the reeds, and the faint hum of the LED light that could probably be seen from space.

The river’s starting to colour up nicely now, and with the forecast promising yet another day of relentless rain tomorrow, at least it’ll get the flush through it needs. A proper cleansing, a reset. The kind of flow that wakes up the gravel, shifts the snags, and whispers promises of better days ahead.

So no, I didn’t catch. But I did escape. And in the grand scheme of things — given the gridlock, the chaos, and the constant drizzle of modern life — that feels like a win