Walk on Wye
A RIVER runs through my life. I cannot quite say I was bred on the banks of the Wye, but my home was separated from the nation’s favourite river (2010 survey) by a sheep paddock when I was a lamb myself. This was just south of the city of Hereford, where the Wye is fat and lethargic.
When I was 10, I spotted a mink at the water’s edge; sinuous and dressed in devil-black, the mink was staring into the water-mirror as if petrified by its own violent being. Bert the gillie, when I informed him of the presence of the predator from another place, gave me a whole, whopping, fresh-hauled 20lb salmon infrom the Wye, was archly amused that I had caught a bigger fish with words than he ever had with line.
