Vagabond

I thought you might favour it for that very reason !!

Have been to S Georgia. One of the great places on the planet, Light-mantled Sooty Albatross, King Penguins, South Georgian Pintail, Fur seals, Elephant seals and many many more. and a major attraction - almost no people. Keep it that way, I say Same argument applies to St Kilda - leave it to the gannets, fulmars and occasional traveller, like me. I don't like sharing wild places with others, - a true angler's natural instinct on finding a stranger in his swim is to kill him. I have been exercising great forbearance.... That just leaves Rockall..............

I never use a hook for more than one session for sea-fishing, Except Big hooks for shark, marlin, skate etc and hooks attached to lures. These I rinse under a freshwater tap when I get back to base and dry before putting away. Resharpen such hooks before re-use In freshwater I never use hooks of #16 or smaller more than two sessions larger hooks I will re-use, but only after sharpening. and always dry them either on packing up, or if its raining, as soon as I get home

Norma and I had a few hours at a woodland pool this morning. Fished a big lob under a waggler. Hoped for a decent perch, but got just one bite - a ten pound carp. As she netted it for me Norma said "That's ten pounds" Weighed 11-12 in the net, and my wet net weighs just 1-12. So who needs a spring balance. Took a picture of each side and remembered a former angler who was notorious for doing that, then changing his jacket, taking two more pics, and then claiming four fish in the club "total season specimen catch" competition He was a bit of a joke at the club, as another trick he had for roving competitions was multiple keep nets concealed along the river which he had filled during the previous few days. An absolute rogue who would rather win by chicanery than by fair means. BTW Is there any easy way to post photos, or do we now have to use a a third party ?. I note that one that used to be free now wants money. Part of the decline in this forum stems from the demise of the photo facility. How much would it cost to reinstate a direct photo facility ? Nice pics BB

Thanks for the input guys. The trailer option sounds a good idea. One Tramper, one trailer to carry it, both camper van and car fitted with towbars. Sounds good, flexible and avoids expensive conversions. Will explore that further Chesters, the Volvo has just passed an MOT, but the list of items that will need attention before the next MOT is chilling. "A millstone around ones neck" comes to mind or white elephants ...... Its now 19 years old and I have had my money's-worth out of it.

The Australians aready do - they call them road trains. They run on outback roads, Instead of rails, they run on channels in the bulldust Bloody difficult to get out of those channels if you are in a campervan and you see a road train coming, They take no prisoners........

Have owned Volvo estates since about 1983, present one is to be scrapped before its next MOT in 2018 What I need is a robust petrol-powered vehicle capable of carrying a heavy mobility scooter and the ramp necessary for retrieving it. (I'm looking at a Tramper mobility scooter) My angina has been largely - but not completely - resolved, only to find that an arthritic knee is limiting how far I can walk. I'm trying to improve muscle tone, but at age 83, am only just about holding deterioration at bay. I'm determined to carry on fishing , so an all-terrain scooter seems a good bet. I drove a Landrover Disco 3 in Namibia for a month and quite liked that, so a Disco is a candidate. looking at the Si6, also the Volvo XC90T6, The motor trade seems obsessed at the moment with off-loading their diesel models, so are not much help. Any advice from anyone with experience of similar vehicle problems is welcome

Reminds me of an old colonial joke about tigers that I was able to put to good use.... We were on a hike through a tiger sanctuary in Assam. About a dozen of us with two guides, and received wisdom said it was comparatively safe by daylight . There was a somewhat domineering female within our ranks - she treated her husband like a butler and the rest of the world like inferior domestics. During conversation someone asked what we should do if a tiger were encountered. "Run!" I flippantly suggested. "That would be foolish" said the Grande Dame, "a man cannot outrun a tiger" "No marm" I replied "but I would not be trying to run faster than the tiger, it would be good enough merely to run faster than you" The GD had obviously not heard the joke before and was suitably outraged at my callousness.

Well, he is certainly the noisiest, but with the sound turned down and the teletext turned off, there is some good scenery and action - the fishing guides see to that.

One used to live under the laundry cum shed cum outside-loo building on my brother-in-law's spread in Tasmania. No-one knew it was there until the dog got a bit excited one day and they realised what he was "marking" Sat up at night with a torch until it came out and shot it It would certainly have accelerated proceedings for anyone discovering they were sharing the dunnie with a tiger snake,

Fly fished the sea around Stewart Island some years ago. AFAIK it was free then, and a lot of locals were anxious to tell me I was wasting my time - bait was the only thing. Tune changed when I caught a number of Tasmanian Trumpeter Latris lineata (They called them Kohikohi) and I finished up having to give an impromptu fly-tying class in between catching fish. If you go sea-fishing, take a thick rag with you and handle any spiky fish with great caution - scorpion perch are common - the spines are poisonous. Flatheads are less poisonous but can inflict nasty gashes - they are covered with hooked spines.

If only ! The bullocks ate the bloody lot - and the "tops" - they also trampled down many of the other plants they didn't eat. Unless you notice a bullock invasion in the first few seconds, there is precious little you can do. Six bullocks only need about ten minutes to devastate a medium-sized garden.

Maybe, but a lot of extra CO2 was generated by me and the half-dozen bullocks by my chasing said bullocks up and down the garden. They were too stupid to leave by the same way as they arrived, and eventually had to be driven out of the front gate, up the road, left at the crossroads, down the lane to their field gate - a trip of about a quarter-mile. Next morning they jumped the hedge again...... Anyway, my garden now extends to a copse with a brooklet in the bottom (no fish) No more bullocks - just fallow deer, roe deer, badgers, foxes, grey squirrels and tulip-eating pheasants, Next door has a goldfish pond, so they get grey heron as well.

cf posrt#18 When there was a field behind my garden, the bullocks in the field preferred to jump the hedge and eat my Brussel's sprouts rather than the luscious grass at their feet - eventually I solved the problem by buying the field (sine bullocks) and adding it to my garden.

Dunno about that, but my brother-in-law's goats would escape their pen from time to time and eat anything they could find except the grass on the lawn., Flower garden was favourite, kitchen garden next, then the hedge. They would even climb small trees to get at the lower leaves. There did not seem any plant they would not tackle. As Jim put it "They only eat grass when they are desperate"

Yeah, Indo-Pacific Tarpon (aka Ox-eye herring) got one in the Jardine river in '05 - on fly They do fight well, but nothing like as well as the Atlantic Tarpon. Got a 22 pound Atlantic on a #7 fly outfit in Belize - perhaps the most memorable fight of my life. Marlin/sailfish tame by comparison.

Well yes, but because a solution is technically possible does not mean it is economically feasible. Sometimes for political reasons a government throws money at an uneconomic solution (plus a brainwashing campaign to convince the gullible that it is a Good Thing) - but the taxpayer shoulders the burden in the long run,

My late father-in-law once had a run-in with a car-park attendant over some trivial matter (vehicle about a quarter-inch too long for the parking space) Pa-in-[aw's comment became a family saying "Give a twerp a peaked cap and a rule book, and he thinks he's King Dick"

As I am over 80 I get my TV free (although I pay a subscription to sky so as to watch Test cricket and other sports) Therefore the "No taxation, no representation" principle applies. Despite my tongue-in-cheek post #20, If I did pay a fee, I think I might well write to the BBC suggesting that female presenters are overpaid already, and male presenters are grossly overpaid. Two million a year for a jumped-up disc jockey - I ask you.....

With all the media at present obsessed with "gender identity" the female staff of the BBC have a perfect solution. Each writes to the CEO and says that in future "she" is now "he". Ie "he" now wishes to be treated as male - [ike using the male toilets, not wearing heels, getting man-sized portions at the canteen and of course getting a man-sized salary. Could be t effective (or at the very least, disruptive) if they ALL did it.

... or three if you put some malt vinegar on the chips. Finish off with a cup of tea and a fag and that's your five sorted

I shall be 106 in 2040 so will probably be driving an electric mobility scooter anyway. Car or scooter will be driven by rechargeable batteries, There will be two problems that have not been addressed so far 1 The car driving population will almost certainly swamp the availability of recharging points. Recharging will take much longer than filling up with petrol. The problem is academic from my perspective but the best of luck to you youngsters 2 Rechargeable batteries do not last forever so there will be a problem of disposal. Batteries are packages of chemical nasties that will be rejected by your local council dump. Think of the fuss some councils make over fridge disposal and multiply by the number of cars on the road and the frequency of replacing batteries.

that makes a good case for the de-extinction and/or re-introduction (as the case may be), of mammoth, woolly rhino, lynx, sabre-tooth tiger, wolf, brown bear, etc - should shorten the queue at the chippy a bit. Wild boar are back already - but very little collision with homo sapiens as yet

Rock salmon - or in the more truthful chippies, "huss" - was commonplace from WWII until about 1970. I rarely see it offered nowadays. Rock salmon (aka "flake") was also a term used by the back street chippies to cover lesser spotted dogs, greater spotted dogs, spurdogs, smooth houind, tope and anything of the same shape - depending upon age it was either too sweet or else diabolical (I mean ammoniacal) Like Ajay, I find any decent chippie these days offers both cod and haddock I too don't know which I like best Some of the "upper class" chippies in the Southeast also offer "Plaice and chips" for those that think cod is too proletarian - it is a good way of disposing of witches, megrims, flounders etc to the ignorant at a premium price. "Skate and chips" is now rare - fine if its thornback, less so if its a lump of common skate - both on gastronomic and on conservation grounds. Last time I was in Brixham one desperate sea-front chippie was offering "sustainable" pollack and pout to the gullible. Well the pout is certainly sustainable as far as I am concerned - the old fishermen who called them "stink-alive" certainly had a point - they begin to rot the moment they leave the water. Grilled instantly on the beach seconds after catching, they are not too bad, but any delay via wholesaler and fishmonger - ugh !!

Just had a week on a narrow boat on the Severn with Norma and Lutra, Started well, with plenty of perch and zander, but fizzled out a bit when the temperature dropped mid-week, It was a bit disappointing for the two zander -hunting guests that joined us mid-week - they were greeted with tales of stacks of zanders (fishing two rods the night before I had had two fish on at once) Alas, the guests' arrival coincided with a disappearance of zander and perch bites. All they had to show was a small jack pike each. The species count was down also - a couple of years ago Lutra and I got a dozen species each, this year I could only muster nine species to Lutra's eleven