If she dumps you then wants you back, never go back. The place of a holiday romance, the places where you used to play when you were a boy, the house your parents brought you up in, the pond where you hoisted aloft your very first perch. They say 'never go back, you will only be disappointed'. Some things are best left alone as crisp memories, I guess.
I'm doing the white van man thing at the moment, back in the UK, to collect various goods before returning home to France. While I'm here however, I intend to visit some of the places where I first started to fish as a boy. I think it's a kind of closure thing. My mother will be moving home soon, well away from the village life where my sister and I were brought up. Well away from the farm ponds, well away from the Macclesfield canal. I am forty six now, but sense I soon will no longer have reason to return to the green fields of my youth. Will I regret it though?
My racing days have long been over, but I still love to run. For many years I raised the dust in summer and left my foot prints in the winter, along the narrow tow paths of the Macclesfield and Trent and Mersey canals. This evening I will do the same again, albeit slower. I have worked out a route: left out from my mother's, cross the road, right at the Bleeding Wolf, out across the fields before entering the grounds of the old Lawton estate. It's late April, so the bluebells will be out; around Lawton lake, out through the woods, cross the road into Knowsley Lane, pass Ferny's Pond, then drop onto the Macclesfield canal. Along to Drumber Lane, up the hill and cross the field to Perch Pool. Back via Sludge Woods and Little Moss.
Entering Lawton Woods and after all these years, the 'onion smell' is still here. It's wild garlic of course, the white flowers laden all up the side of this shady bank. When Rob and I were kids we didn't eat garlic then, didn't know what it was either, so to us it was the 'onion smell'. Strong and thick in this part of the woods. Just over the brow of the hill and deep down the other side, the lake is there. The huge beech trees on the left bank have gone, the old brick keeper's tower has been knocked down, the island has been butchered – the group of old horse chestnuts has been felled, leaving only their stumps as reminders of their once beauty. Not good.
I can't turn right. There is a barbed wire fence and a freshly-painted sign nailed to a tree, over where the old path used to meander: 'Private, keep out'. I'm instantly enraged. I feel like running purposely along the path wanting to be accosted by someone who 'thinks' they own the lake. I even have my lines ready – 'I've been coming here since I was a kid and have no intention of stopping now.' When I used to fish here, you had to grovel to the headmaster to buy your season permit. The housing estate now covers the area of the old school, tennis courts and sports field. Only the cemetery remains. The snotty-nosed kids of the rich parents used to throw stones at us while we were fishing. It was worth sticking it out though, not just because of the good fishing, but some of the girls in their straw boaters and purple ribbons used to sometimes sneak down to the lake. Best leave it there I think.
I'm not the confrontational type, however, so I turn left and head out of the woods. Tomorrow I will visit the nearest tackle shop and try and find out the actual state of affairs at the lake. Notice I said 'think they own the lake'. I am very fortunate to be the custodian of sixteen acres of lakes and woodland, but that is what you are, a temporary custodian. When you have finished, you sell, then you hand the baton on to someone else and they do what they think is right. You can't 'own' land, it's not a car or a tractor is it?
I'm looking across the freshly tilled field towards the centre, but the dell with the tops of the bushes rising above the line of the field is no longer there. Ferny's pond has been filled in. Not good. What happened to the perch, the tench, the crucians and the huge 5lb carp my friend hooked one afternoon after school? What about the lilies and the huge abundance of wild life that dwelled here….gone. I guess the pool was first filled with old fridges and tons of rubble, then soil tipped and levelled over the top. They did a good job, the new surface of the field offers no clues to what haven used to thrive underneath. Like I say, not good.
Next I head towards Sludge Woods, but before I get there I take a right, cross over the stile and head out across the public footpath which cuts alongside the hedge. I climb up over the hill, then as I near the top, the tops of the old oak trees should have come into view. Today they didn't. They were not there, nor were the two adjoining ponds which rested beneath the great oaks. One oak had fallen, splitting open the great trunk. We used to hide in there spying on passers by walking their dogs. In the summer holidays we used to play on inflated inner tubes which we used to scrounge from the scrap yard. We used to watch the sticklebacks in the weed beds. The great oaks were gone, their roots must have been dug up by the merciless excavators, prior to filling in the two ponds. Here remained a clue though; there was a clear dell in the centre of the field. All gone, all for the needs of our greedy selves. Greedy selves, craving cheap supermarkets, crushing defenceless famers. Not good.
I leave behind another place I used to love, leaving the next generation of dog walkers completely unaware of what lay beneath. I turn left, cross another stile, then head back to the towpath of the canal. Dropping onto the towpath and I can't believe the transformation, the once serene canal, shrouded with read mace and iris below, then willows, hawthorn and beech above, now looks like the A1M and just as straight. You can imagine the meeting in head office; 'Let's dredge the canal and de-silt it', so far so good. 'But while we're at it, we'll dig out all the marginal reed beds, cut down all the bushes and trees, make the canal as straight as an arrow and put in bank-side reinforcing tins, because when we dug out the reed beds, not only did we decimate the wildlife but we took away the barriers to stop the barge wakes eating away at the bankside'. Now we have no reed beds but ugly tins backfilled with rubble and gravel. Hurrah. Not just 'not good', but an ecological and aesthetic catastrophe. Is it just me? Am I out of touch? Should I stop moaning and just go quietly?
I trot along the white compressed gravel and perk up when I see an angler ahead, with whom I of course stop and have a chat. Whilst we chat, he catches a small roach, then quickly another. We wait a few more minutes then he gets another, under which slides the landing net, a very nice roach in glistening condition. The fishing apparently now is fabulous. Great fishing in this small canal, but with hardly anyone fishing it. All off to the commercial fisheries I guess, where you can bag up a ton of starving fish in no time. I am delighted to hear about the enjoyable fishing, but what really is a pleasant surprise, is when I see a mandarin duck sitting on a nest on the far bank. I have already passed several mallards. Years ago, the only wildfowl we used to see were moorhens, now it looks like the number of species has increased somewhat. Good, very good. Maybe I have it wrong about the big machines butchering the banks, maybe it is a good thing after all.
Back in the late seventies, early eighties, the River Trent at Shardlow; wow, what fishing that used to be. Large bags of chub and good stamp roach were very common. However, the neighbouring power station closed and the fishing seemed to fall into a slow decline. The non-fishing public saw something very different, the river was no longer dirty but nice and clean, so that was good wasn't it? A very clean river, full of invisible pesticide wash-off from the fields, but that didn't matter, no one could see it. Not good at all.
This "Victor Meldrew" feel article ends, though, on a very positive note. I called into the local tackle shop in Borrowash, very close to the Trent. I had the same discussion as above, with the clearly very knowledge tackle dealer behind the counter. The Trent is coming back, he said. Now there are frequent good catches of roach and it appears that fish stocks are adapting well to a very different environment.
So let's just hope that with all the pesticides we spill into our water courses, the molestation by the big machines and the constant attempts to thwart our fish stocks, that they will survive. I'm sure they will. And that's good.
