Summer arrives ?

Sunday 8th May crack of sparra's fart.
The top lane down to the lakes down in the valley has suffered quite a bit of erosion this last year or so.
Heavy lorries and machinery involved in running an estate hasn't helped the situation, but once you get towards the bottom it's obvious that rainwater has paid it's part too, channeling relatively deep rivulets on it's way to the level area of farmyard and barns at the bottom.
Before the new motor the old girl would bounce down there, crunching the undercarriage beneath the bumper that never did fully recover from an encounter with a muntjac some years ago.The new motor was a dream cruise by comparison.
Anyway, I was awake most of early Sunday morning after a homemade curry made itself known, grumbling away in my stomach. I gave up any attempt to sleep so decided to get up and go visit the lakes, setting off just before dawn broke
I had been thinking of fishing the bigger of the 3 coarse lakes, as it had been one of those which I hadn't given a great deal of time to. I need to check if there were still tench in there, and whether the roach and crucians had grown over the years.
On arrival I was surrounded by a cacophony of geese, both canada and greylag, not liking being awakened by a human. They all cleared the lake and headed for the field opposite where I was setting myself up and,in doing so, they disturbed a pair of hare.
My camera, still in the bag and with the wrong lense anyway, meant I failed to capture the moment as they lopped of across to the back of the field and over the hill..

So I set myself up, after a wander around, in an area of the lake I knew contained some goodish roach, and used to be where the tench came out a good few years back.
 I was home by 8am for breakfast, the fish stopping to take at nibble at my worm over hempseed, more or less as soon as the sun hit the water.
The result was one carp of about 5lb, a snotty (bream) and a roach of around the pound mark.
No sign of tench
I suffered all day Sunday through the lack of sleep, even trying for 40 winks after the lunchtime visit to the local failed, so decided a Monday morning dawn start probably wasn't on. Indeed it wasn't, as I had a great sleep through until about 8:30am.

Another fine day yesterday, so I decided to fish a few hours until sunset. setting out for the five minutes or so drive, at around 17:30.
The geese were all still in the field, bird calls everywhere, chiffchaff, reed bunting and warbler to name but a few.
I set up in the same spot, once again with worm over hempseed, using my Aspindales Aero backed up with my Youngs Heritage, 4lb Maxima, a porcupine quill straight through to a size 12 microbarb fished lift method, with about 4 inches on the bottom.
The carp were the first in action, followed by a chub of less than 3lb, a crucian of around a pound, some small rudd and a bream interspersed with more carp of no real size but a good tussle nevertheless on the lightish gear.Still no sign of tench!

And, so as the sun sets I head off home dodging a rather large hare, as he skipped down the road from side to side, giving me no indication of which way he was going!

I'm voting OUT.
As my regular readers will know I was a senior manager with C&A, a Dutch( European wide) family business, for nearly 20 years, ok not on the retail or buying side, I looked after the estate. 

During the later years of C&A's existence in the UK it was decided that whilst everybody in C&A Europe should speak English, trading and buying would be set up on a European wide basis. 
In other words centralisation, and a one size fits all philosophy .
Well it didn't work, the folk of the UK didn't buy the one size fits all approach.
C&A showed it didn't work so they sold up and left the UK..

I can still remember the first grapevine tale after the centralisation the first casualty of Eurosell was the stocking of shoes made in Germany in the UK stores, almost the entire stock was returned unsold! I'm sure there were similar occurrences but the grapevine was lopped.

What we had was a similar set up to the EU.

IMHO it's time for us to show that the UK doesn't fit the one size fits all mould, and continuing to be set by the EU. 
Time to get out

In the garden

Well, the house sparrow pair have finally decided to build the nest in the box formerly occupied, for the last few years by great tits. It's nearly complete(shaped like a big wren's nest) but with no eggs, yet.

We have two fledgeling blackbird from one nest in the garden, we have another pair nesting with eggs, along with a song thrush, hedge accentor, linnet all within the boundary hedges.

I'm happy that I did not renew the old wooden fences and replaced with a natural hedge.