Kingfishers & Dragonflies...

Made a pleasant trip with JT to another, once polluted, urban river. You know the kind of place, where the town centre has grown up around a river and over the years the burghers have used the water as a dumping ground for their rubbish. Did they somehow imagine that once cast into the murky depths their detritus would be washed away along with any thoughts of guilt.

However, as the traffic rumbled overhead, we descended into an overlooked underworld for surely the people walking around the town above us were unaware of the beauty that lay beneath their feet. During the day I saw three magical Kingfishers darting up and down the river and we both spotted a large brown dragonfly zipping overhead. It hovered for while a few feet above us but we proved of little interest to this particular aeronaut and in a flash it was twenty feet away.

Dry fly beetles and a bit of double-nymphing brought enough plump and beautifully marked brown trout to hand to keep us both quite happy. A quick break for a liquid lunch and we were soon knee deep once more on a higher stretch. However, the fish had faded away and after some time we called it a day.
A few pints of Guinness in a pleasant beer garden - the perfect spot for the debriefing.