Quarry Bank Fishery - Part 4
Fennel continues his 12-part series about carp fishing at the fabulous Quarry Bank Fishery in France, this time journeying there.
Getting there
When heading out to fish a new water, one tends to dwell on thoughts such as, "What do I know, what don't I know, what will I need to take, what will I need to do (to catch), how will I get there, and – whether successful or not – how will I document the adventure?"
For me as a writer, photographer, and occasional podcaster and filmmaker, documenting the adventure would be easy. And, thankfully for Tim and me, we had an expert guide in Shaun Harrison to answer the other questions. Not only was Shaun our agent on behalf of Dream Fishing Holidays, he would also be part of our team.
Sherpa-strength guide
As a good friend and expert teacher, Shaun speaks honestly, 'telling it how it is' without unnecessary BS or sales polish. (His enthusiasm is enough to secure the sale.) Always a sign of a good teacher, Shaun listens well so he can quickly understand the potential and any limitations of his students. Thus his recommendations, nudges and sometimes philosophical observations do what's needed to bring out the best in his pupils and fishing holidaymakers.
In preparing for our trip, Shaun's guidance, daily banter on WhatsApp, and 'have you seen this?!' pictures and videos, guaranteed that Tim and I were salivating at the prospect of going fishing. (Frankly, 'anywhere', such is Shaun's passion for the sport, but especially to the now 'near mystical' Quarry Bank Fishery in France.)
Overseas quest
Fanning the flames of our desire for adventure, Shaun had convinced us that an overseas trip was what we needed. Sure, we could have gone fishing together in the UK, perhaps to one of Shaun and my BCSG carp waters, but the added excitement of going overseas – with thoughts of airports and flights, foreign language challenges, strange "d'euro..." money, unusually long bread, rabid sausage dogs and, for me as nominated driver, the eminently terrifying prospect of driving 'on the wrong side of the road!' – was too much to resist. We would grin, bite into a block of French cheese, and bear the 'liberated' challenges and ooh-la-las that awaited us.
Cultural adaptation
To what extent would we adopt the 'when in Rome' principles of travel?
We'd be going to France, so:
Getting into a tight-fitting stretchy blue-and-white striped top? No problem. Knitting a scarf from onions? You got it. Rolling our 'rrrrrs' at sultry French maidens? Oui mademoiselle. Waltzing in the street to the tunes of an accordion? Hell, yeah. We might even don berets and sing La Marseillaise. Anything to get us closer to our adventure of a lifetime.
Or, of course, we could just travel as Englishmen and shout ever-louder at the locals until they understood us.
Hmm.
"Bonjewer mon petite filo; avec du un knowey du way tue QUARRY...BANK...FISH-ER-EEEY?"
Yep. That would get us there.
In our wisdom, we agreed not to try and pass as Frenchmen. "Fluent in some things, not in others." When it came to it, our mistresses could only ever be the alluring and always seductive carp.
Promise of adventure, and big fish
We were enthralled by the prospect of 'getting away', immersing ourselves in holiday spirit and each doing some much needed fishing. For a whole week. What a wonderfully indulgent treat. But there was something about fishing in France that had special appeal to me.
There's a French quote, attributed to 19th Century poet Alphonse de Lamartine, that says: "Il n'y a d'homme plus complet que celui qui beaucoup voyage, qui a change vingt fois la forme de sa pensee et de sa vie." Its English translation is: “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” I've always liked this quote, ever since discovering it in a French phrase book while looking for chat-up lines at college.
Young at heart
When I was younger, life itself seemed like a bold and eager journey with new experiences around every bend in the river. As I've grown older and slowed up, so I have experienced moments where I've felt a little 'silted up' by my comparatively sedentary lifestyle. A good 'flush out' works, a virtual winter flood of mini adventures such as bike rides, hill walks, fishing trips, and a good old back-breaking dig in the vegetable garden. But, my, the thought of going fishing abroad, to experience a 'beaucoup voyage' in France. How apt that would be, how very congruent with my younger self and his oh-so-defiant taunts of "Go on, then, old man!"
Of course, my young and adventurous self didn't have a wife and family, or a mortgage, or a job with responsibilities, or many people who would miss him when he disappeared. It would be harder for me now to fully embrace the 'escape' without feeling a little guilty. But, as they say in the Marines: "Selfless Selfishness", which means that to be of best service to others, we must first be in holistic good health. Never was there a better explanation for why we – for the good of others – are obliged to go fishing.
Time for a big, bold, new adventure
Well, not completely new. I'd fished in France before, during the late nineties and early naughties, accompanying my good friend Andy Wareham on his exploratory trips to lakes in the Limoges region. But they were very much Andy's trips, with him working out all the logistics, doing all the driving, and (rightly) catching most of the fish. Compared to the upcoming quest to Quarry Bank Fishery, I was merely the one handing out the boiled sweets on a very long drive.
But my earlier trips had taught me something – that when venturing into the unknown, one really has to have done one's reconnaissance or have a strong and experienced hand to hold. (Preferably both.) So, truth is, I wouldn't have undertaken this trip had it not been for Shaun's presence, guidance and reassurance. As much as I might attempt to come across as a pioneer, I'm really one of the small kids in fluorescent waistcoats walking behind their teacher (albeit with a catapult in one pocket and some bubble-gum naughtily stashed in the other).
The learning is that, when evaluating providers of fishing holidays, you should understand and appreciate the value provided by the guide or agent.
Plan of retreat
The plan for our travel was simple: Shaun and I would fly together via Ryanair from East Midlands Airport, Tim would fly separately via Flybe from Southampton. Both flights would land at Limoges airport* mid-afternoon on the Saturday. We'd then collect our hire car, do a quick food shop, and then catch up on news while driving for three hours to Quarry Bank Fishery. Simple as it gets.
*Limoges airport is a three-hour drive to Quarry Bank. There are other, and closer, airports to the lake (Poitiers is only 1 hour drive away, La Rochelle is 1.5 hours, and Nantes is 2 hours drive) but flights there would have required us to connect via other airports, such as Dublin, adding waiting time to our journeys. Limoges is also a lovely small airport, with easy car hire collection right outside the terminal and plenty of supermarkets nearby to stock up on food.
Apparently, I don't do simple
Some context for you: In my previous job I flew all round the world, delivering training sessions, consultancy and conference speeches. I would fly every week, clocking up over 200,000 air miles every year. All business class. Nice gig if you can get it and, yes, the 'all you can drink' complimentary champagne helped me to endure the five course in-flight dinners and 'steamed towel' spa treatments on board. It was a long way from Priory HQ and my desire to unplug from that jet-set lifestyle. (Being Fennel has always helped to keep me 'grounded'.) But, I have to confess, I wasn't quite prepared for the experience of budget airline travel.
Of all the air travel I'd done in the previous 25 years, only one flight had been non-business class. Therefore I was used to just turning up at an airport, parking wherever I liked (if not in valet 'Purple Parking'), strolling up to the Business Class desk, collecting my ticket and bypassing the regular queue to security, heading straight to the business lounge, getting mildly drunk on free booze, and then getting priority boarding onto the plane, where I would peruse the menu designed by some celebrity chef, while being waited on by a supermodel-of-a-hostess who was keen to ensure that my eyes did not want for anything.
It was rather different to the experience that awaited me.
The joys of budget travel
Travelling by budget airline is, by definition, 'cheap'. Everything is designed to minimise cost and so you get what you pay for. If you want more, it costs more. That doesn't necessarily make it worse, just that travellers need to be better organised than me if they are to avoid unexpected shocks.
I'd booked the flights late, meaning that the earlier quote of "£50 return" had risen to £90 per person. This only included a small 10kg carry-on bag that could be stored overhead, plus a briefcase-sized bag that could be stored under a seat. This proved to be insufficient (the sleeping bag alone filled the small bag, irrespective of weight) so I added a 20kg 'big suitcase' allowance for another £80, and ensured that I would fill it to within 'the last boilie' so that it weighed not an ounce less or more than allowed. So the total flight cost was £170: £120 more than it needed to be.
And then I realised, when Shaun and I arrived at the airport, that I hadn't pre-booked any parking. I'd have to park 'on the clock' for £273 for the week, a whopping £211 more than if I'd booked in advance. And then, when we'd lugged all our suitcases from the distant corner of the car park, we arrived at the ticket collection desk to find that I hadn't checked in online. So we were charged £55 each to print our boarding passes.
So I'd been hit with £386 of unexpected and unnecessary cost, all due to me being unprepared**. I should have been stressed-out by this, but I wasn't. I was so in the holiday vibe that I just 'went with the flow' and remained unbothered by anything. We knew that once we got to France, our hire car (a 'Fiesta-size car') was booked and waiting for us. At £205 for the week, the cost of which would be split three ways, it was a known expense and thus nothing more to worry about.
**I paint an honest confession here, influenced by my inexperience of 'real' travel. Of course, Shaun had done his best to coach me. But I was so busy catching up with him (we'd enjoyed a wonderful cup of tea at his house, while sitting beside his garden pond, before setting off typically late and in a flurry) that I'd never stopped to think about the boring practicalities of getting there 'on the cheap'.
A thought on the plane
While I was sitting at the back of the plane, enjoying the scents of an iffy toilet and awaiting my £5 microwave curry, I got into the vibe of this sort of travel – realising that it was rather like travelling via a basic, slightly rattly, but super-fast bus. It was what it was. An 'A-B' that gets us there. And that made me wonder just how clever one could be with this sort of 'fly-and-fish' experience.
Would it have to be a holiday, or could it be our norm?
Time to fish
Back in the mid-nineties, when I was in my early twenties and had just learned to drive, I lived in a little village just twenty miles west of Birmingham. My regular fishing lake (Jade Lake, of Chris Yates' Secret Carp and Caught in Time fame) was in deepest Wiltshire some 125 miles away. My car was an old Volkswagen Polo, a lovely 'mini estate' jalopy which, unbeknown to me being a new driver, had its manual choke set fully open. Thus I could never 'floor it' for fear of flooding the engine, and I had to stop each way to refill my petrol tank (costing a whopping – for the time – £20 for the 42 litres). The whole journey would take no less than six hours, sometimes nine, depending on whether the wind blew the 'white-out' smoke from my exhaust towards my direction of travel. So, I always allowed for a whole afternoon and early evening to get to the lake, and the same on the way back. A 12-18 hour round trip each weekend, using four tanks of fuel, for 36 hours' fishing.
Could I have got to Quarry Bank in the same time, even though the lake is in south-west France?
The door-to-door travel time to Quarry Bank, from my home in North Wales, was expected to take 9 hours. That's 2 hours to the airport, 1 hour for parking and airport check-in, 2 hour flight, 1 hour for passport control and to collect the hire car in Limoges, 3 hours for a quick shop and drive to the lake.
Hmm. That sounds like a whole day's travel, partly because I live in the 'back-end of nowhere' in Wales. An eighteen-hour round trip for a weekend's fishing? Tough to do if you have a boss who expects you to work on a Friday and Monday, but certainly doable for a long weekend if you took those days as holiday. And, of course, it was perfectly okay for a week's fishing holiday – allowing plenty of chill-out time before getting there.
Time is only half the calculation. What about cost?
How much would you pay for the best fishing?
What's the cost of a year's syndicate ticket on a water that contains carp to mid-fifties, catfish to mid-seventies, and roach and rudd to over three pounds? Best part of £2,000 per year, based on top UK waters such as Wellington Country Park, Grenville, Acton Burnell and Wasing.
However, how much time would you be able to spend there? Given the need to justify the cost, it would probably become the only water you fished. So, maybe every weekend? If you did, that would be 48 hours fishing per week, 192 hours per month, 2,304 hours per year (assuming you didn't stop to allow the fish to spawn in spring or for you to thaw out between trips in winter). That's the equivalent of 13 weeks' solid fishing per year. Three months of non-stop, bivvy dwelling, fish hauling action.
Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.
I reckon, in all honesty, most people with family commitments and obligations (or hobbies other than fishing) would find it a luxury to fish for more than one full weekend every month. A weekend per month equates to a modest (but still remarkable-sounding) 3.4 weeks per year.
What if, based on your available time, you could negotiate reducing the syndicate fees by half. ("But darling, it would have been twice that amount if you'd let me out more!") That would be £1,000 for your 3.4 weeks of glorious fishing per year. You'd have the constant and very real chance of catching a fish of a lifetime on every cast, but you'd have to endure catching all the small ones as well which, on reflection, were still bigger than anything in your regular waters.
And if the water, such as Quarry Bank, was in a remote part of France, you'd have to cope with relaxing in countryside that's infinitely less populated and more wildlife-filled than most places in the UK.
Phoar. Grueller.
Grab a calculator
As I was sitting on the plane, doing my best to work out why my 22-year-old self didn't think it strange that his smog-creating, juddering, slug-of-a-car (that could barely do more than 15 miles per hour), was only getting 1.4 miles to the gallon, I began wondering whether the cost of fishing in France could make it a viable option as one's regular water.
I grabbed a pen from my pocket and, writing onto a Ryanair 'complimentary' paper napkin (I'm sure they charged me for it, somehow), I did a quick 'Wish You Were Here?' calculation based on four people fishing and travelling together:
- £250 per person for a week's fishing at Quarry Bank
- £15.50 airport parking (£62 split between four)
- £50 per person return flight (if booked in advance)
- £52 hire care (£208 split between four)
Total: £367.50 per person for the week
(I didn't include the cost of petrol for any of the driving, assuming that this would have been spent getting to a top UK venue anyway.)
I multiplied the total by 3 (assuming the '0.4' half-week of our remaining time would be spent in physio for our fish-catching aches, and allowing our livers to heal from all the cheap French booze) and got to £1,102.50. That's comparable to a middle-top syndicate in the UK, pricey for most, but very cheap for three weeks' holiday.
Really high value
The travel costs were cheap. "Silly cheap," as Shaun described them. And, in reality, most people would only seek to book a week's fishing per year. So £367 is really high value given the quality of adventure, fishing and facilities on offer.
But I had a funny feeling that a week would not be enough. I'd want to return. Again, and again. I'd find a way. But for now, this adventure was most definitely a holiday.
Priceless experience
All that was left to do was land safely in France, drive to the lake, then feel the weight of a thousand pressures lift from our shoulders as we sank, through metaphors and soft pillows, into the warm depths of the Quarry Pool...
Packed and ready to go.
"Everyone aboard", all very much ready for a holiday.
First sight of France.
In Part 5, Fennel, Shaun and Tim arrive in France and savour their first impressions of the lake.
Quarry Bank Fishery is a 5-acre water in southwest France, about a two-hour drive from Limoges airport. It is set within 14 acres of private grounds, which are sensitively managed for their wildlife interest. This makes it a haven for both anglers and fish. The fishery is available for exclusive bookings only, for up to five anglers.