Paul Reddish and I were in Cervera de Pisuerga the other day, a mountain town in the province of Palencia in northern Spain. We paused briefly on the street to count how many griffon vultures were circling overhead. We more or less agreed on our best guess — twenty-five and then, when we lowered our gaze again to street level, to our surprise, we found ourselves staring straight into the window of a fishing tackle shop.
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Paul Reddish and I took a trip along the Pisuerga River yesterday, meeting the river in Aguilar de Campoo and following it upstream towards its source in the Cantabrian Mountains. The road can only take you so far — we pretty much ran out of tarmac in the little village of Santa María de Redondo, home to dogs that sleep in the street and begrudgingly allow you to drive on. There’s an ample car park for those who want to hike further, but it was a little late in the day for us to do that. That hike follows the course of the river initially before separating, but it eventually leads to the river’s source, said to be a spring called Fuente Cobre.
View full article »I don’t know which one of us is more stupid — me or our dog, Sable. The two of us have taken to wandering the local tracks of the campo and trekking across open fields in the moonlight, when anybody with half a brain would be tucked up in bed.
View full article »We have just come back from a hike up the tops of some of the peaks that we had seen when previously walking the caminito del Rey, Andalucia´s famous cliff edge walking path. There were three of us, my daughter Pippa, myself and Sable the black labrador that, you may recall, had disgraced herself during her audition as my fishing companion. Today, to her credit, she did not put a foot wrong and was excellent company throughout. She is knackered now though, and is fast asleep at my feet.
View full article »I doubt anybody would suggest that brown trout are among the intellectual giants of the animal kingdom but my brother Sean and I are both prepared to admit that they are a good deal smarter than either of us. It was predominantly the fish of the River Lee, one of Sean´s home rivers, that made us aware of our relative cerebral shortcomings.
View full article »Here in Cantabria there are some areas where trout fishing is available to anyone with a licence, provided they follow the appropriate rules. Around our base here, the town of Reinosa, this is true of much of the Río Ebro, particularly the catch and release section between the town and the reservoir. There are other regions, however, where fishing is restricted and numbers limited and where a special permit is needed (and this applies to hunting too) and such regions are called cotos. I had never fished anything other than public water here before Friday but I did manage to acquire a permit to fish one of four cotos within walking distance. As a member of the Reinosa fishing club I bought it for the discounted price of 5 euros and 20 cents. This coto that I could access was the Coto de Fontibre and covers the stretch of the Ebro between Reinosa and the source of the river Ebro at Fontibre.
View full article »I have spent a few hours recently stalking barbel and carp at the point where the river Ebro flows into the Embalse del Ebro. This is a beautiful place and I have been fortunate enough to have it all to myself.
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