A whistle stop tour of the Ypres Salient

Further Parish Messages.

2: A report on our whistle stop tour to the Ypres Salient.

Like last year's overnight visit to the Somme I feel compelled to write something down, for my own sake if nothing else as I don't want to forget.

You may agree with what you are about to read, you may not,

I'm not particularly bothered either way as this is an honest account of how I felt twenty four hours after our visit to the fields of Flanders.

A little self indulgent perhaps but no clever conclusions or judgement with the benefit of hindsight, just my own observations on a region that few could fail to be touched by.

Lord and Lady Ludgershall would once again be our eminent and excellent guides and we pitched up in Calais a little before 9am. Provisions were purchased in Auchan before we made haste through the hops for Poperinge, the gateway to the Ypres salient and headquarters for much of the war machine operating on that part of the Western front.

It also served as a site for soldiers on a break from time in the front line or in reserve and it was to Talbot House that we headed first. Founded by the Reverend Tubby Taylor it served as an "Everyman's club" for soldiers of all rank in the British Army and provided a brief sanctuary from the madness that is the business of war.

It is remarkably well preserved and still provides accommodation. The Garden in particular must have provided particular solace from an environment reduced to deep mud by bad weather and intense artillery fire.

There was a rudimentary cinema on the first floor and in the roof a tiny chapel. He sounded like a thoroughly decent chap did Tubby Taylor and was obviously highly thought of, as were most of the chaplains who spent time in the front line.

Out of Talbot House and after making brief acquaintance with a statue of Elaine Cossey, known as Ginger to soldiers from all corners of the British Empire for her red hair and vivacity she embodied for many a reminder of human dignity and life that they carried into the hell of the trenches as a spark in their hearts.

The town hall next and the cells where soldiers were held for all manner of misdemeanours including desertion and cowardice, the penalty for these two, being tied to the post that stands in the courtyard and a bullet through the head at dawn. PTSD would be today's diagnosis for many who went this way, but at the time the army relied on Tommy Atkins having enough fire in his belly to climb out of his trench, brave the artillery, machine guns and gas and engage the enemy by whatever means possible, be it rifle, bayonet, club or spade,it was a brutal business maintained by, at times, brutal discipline in an age disparate from today.

Off to Ypres next, a city at the heart of the bulge in the Western Front known as the Ypres salient. It started the war as the third largest city in Flanders after Bruges and Ghent and was dominated by the 13th century Cloth hall and like so many cities in the region was protected by 17th century fortifications by the much vaunted Vauban.

Unfortunately his bulky buttresses and clever ravelins proved no match for several years of Teutonic artillery bombardment from behind the low ridges that surround the city and by 1918 the city was reduced to a pile of rubble.

A million or more Flemish acquired refugee status when the war arrived on their doorstep and were forced to cross international borders to escape the conflict.

Many went to Holland, some went to Britain, others went to more peaceful parts of France.

When the armistice was signed some stayed where they had ended up, but most returned to where they lived before war broke out.

The British called for Ypres not to be rebuilt and stand as a memorial of the many battles that had taken place there, but the Flemish had other ideas and rebuilt the city as it had stood before the bombs began to fall.

And well done the Flemish for that.

I'm not really religious, but there is merit in a resurrection and after the madness of war has receded more than a modicum of faith in humanity is restored when your everyday Joe and Josephine emerge from the wings to pick up the pieces,no matter how shattered the vase.

Welcome to Ypres

It's a city that strikes the right balance between reverence and the requirement to move forward.

It is all too easy to forget that within Pandora's box, hidden beneath all the bad stuff, lay hope.

The Menin Gate straddling the Menin road down which so many trudged never to return stands as a fitting monument to the missing,

although the Last Post in tourist time in high heat was a bit of a scrum as it is an understandable box to be ticked on any organised tour of the area.

It may be more evocative witnessing the event on a bleak day at the end of October in conditions more familiar to the sixty thousand names on the gate.

Kicking back in Ypres, because yes, it is not a maudlin place. We devoured a fine repast ( Flemish stew, Moules, Shrimp Croquettes, Steak and no little wine) in a popular restaurant in the square before heading home to bed.

After the conventional European breakfast we headed to the In Flanders Field Museum housed in the rebuilt Cloth market.

It's a very good museum.

We shared the place with people from many nations who fought on both sides of the war.

As well as the excellent and informative exhibits, it is worth paying the extra two euros to climb to the top of the clock tower which provides an excellent view of the city and the route out of town to the front line and the low ridges held by the Germans.
It takes two hours to do the museum and pick your time to climb the tower as during the rebuild they installed a clever carillian that strikes every fifteen minutes. It's an elaborate series of gongs to signal the passing of time and the stairs to the top pass within a few feet of the many bells, Lord Lugg timed his run wrong and had sparrows circling his crown (see The Beano) for quite a few minutes.

Heading out of town, it was off to Essex Farm and the advanced dressing station where the Canadian Medico John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" after witnessing his mate obliterated by a direct hit to the artillery battery to which he was assigned on the bank of the nearby canal.

We visited McCrae's grave on our trip down the coast to Etaples last year. Madam's school use the text each year when the curriculum requires them to make mention of the First World War. How McCrae came up with such easy prose in the most desperate of circumstances is beyond me, but then I refer you back to the top of this guff, it is impossible to comprehend what was possible in such circumstances with the benefit of hindsight.

Vancouver corner next and a stunning art deco memorial of a brooding soldier that marks the site where a Canadian division were subject to one of the first gas attacks during the second battle of Ypres
.

The designer of the memorial had finished second in a competition to the chap who came up with the Vimy Ridge memorial.

The Vancouver corner memorial may be substantially smaller than the winner of the competition, but the impact is the equal of Vimy Ridge.

And so to Tyne Cot, the largest CWGC in existence on top of the Passchendaele ridge looking back across all those Flanders Fields to Ypres.

In preparation for our visit I'd read "Passchendaele" by Nigel Steel and Peter Hart. It's a good book that relies heavily on anecdote from those who were there, the German take on matters is a little lacking , but it is evident that men (a lot of whom had already been through the misery of the Somme) were operating at mental and physical limits difficult to comprehend today. Dreadful Weather and intense artillery bombardment rendered the field of battle close to impassable. The Germans held the higher ground and constructed a series of pill boxes that covered each other if attacked. The Allies adopted new tactics of "Bite and hold" with the objective of a decisive breakthrough abandoned they sought smaller gains of a thousand yards or so that they would then endeavour to retain in the face of the inevitable German counter attack. This was then abandoned briefly with disastrous results before a return to a more prepared approach under the command of a Canadian which was also doomed to fail in impossible conditions as the fields of Flanders became the very embodiment of hell.

A few words from one who was there

The approach to the ridge was a desolate swamp, over which brooded an evil menacing atmosphere that seemed to defy encroachment. Far more treacherous than the visible surface defences with which we were familiar; deep devouring mud spread deadly traps in all directions. We splashed and slithered, and dragged our feet from the pull of an invisible enemy determined to suck us into its depths. Every few steps someone would slide and stumble and weighed down by rifle and equipment, rapidly sink into the squelching mess. Those nearest grabbed his arms, struggled against being themselves engulfed and, if humanly possible, dragged him out. When helpers floundered in as well and doubled the task, it became hopeless. All the straining efforts failed and the swamp swallowed its screaming victims, and we had to be ordered to plod on dejectedly and fight this relentless enemy as stubbornly as we did those we could see. It happened that one of those leading us was Lieutenant Chamberlain, and so distraught did he become at the spectacle of men drowning in mud, and the desperate efforts to rescue them that suddenly he began hysterically belabouring the shoulders of a sinking man with his swagger stick. We were horrified to see this most compassionate officer so unstrung as to resort to brutality, and our loud protests forced him to desist. The man was rescued, but some could not be and they sank shrieking with fear and agony. To be ordered to go ahead and leave a comrade to such a fate was the hardest experience one could be asked to endure, but the objective had to be reached, and we plunged on, bitter anger against the evil forces prevailing piled on to our exasperation. This was as near to Hell as I ever want to be.

Private Norman Cliff. 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards.


The hope that sprung from Pandora's box is evident in the rebuild of Ypres, the desolation of war is all to evident at Tyne Cot. It is an affecting place sited on the low ridge looking back at Ypres across the Flanders fields in which so many met a miserable end.

You enter the cemetery on a path with hidden speakers through which the voice of a young woman issues a roll call of the dead. Most were around the age of my own children, which raised the first lump in the throat. Enter the visitor centre and a minimalist display draws the eye,

as do some quotes on the wall

but driven by the background roll call

the eye is drawn to a screen on the end wall displaying the photo of each person announced,



and at this point I nearly went because after all the grave stones, crosses and memorials there were human beings with their own identity and story to tell behind each set of eyes.

Here's a quote from one who made it home

"The next night my pal came out with me. We heard one of their big ones coming over. Normally within reason, you could tell if it was going to land anywhere near or not. If it was, the normal procedure was to throw yourself down and avoid the shell fragments. This one we knew was going to drop near. My pal shouted and threw himself down. I was too damned tired even to fall down. I stood there. Next i had a terrific pain in the back and chest and I found myself face down in the mud. My pal came to me, he tried to lift me up. I said to him, "Don't touch me, leave me, I've had enough, just leave me" The next thing I found myself sinking in the mud. I don't hate it any more- it seemed like a protective blanket covering me. I thought "well this is death, it's not so bad" Then I foudn myself being bumped about and realised I was on a stretcher. I thought "poor devils these stretcher bearers - I wouldn't be a stretcher bearer for anything" I suddenly realised I wasn't dead and that if these wounds didn't prove fatal I should get back to my parents, to my sister, to my girl who I was going to marry. The girl that had sent me a letter every day from the beginning of the war. I thought "Thank God for that!" Then the dressing station, morphia and the sleep that is so badly needed. I didn't recollect any more till I found myself in a bed with white sheets and I heard the lovely wonderful voices of our nurses. Then I completely broke down."

Bombardier J.W Palmer, 26th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery laying communication lines who had survived three years in action.

It is difficult to portray the scale of Tyne Cot with a camera from the ground so here's one from the air.



Many of the graves and names on the wall are of soldiers who travelled a long way around the world (when transport was not so simple as today) to fight the hun. Rows and rows of Australians, Canadians, Africans, Indians and corners of Europe that I had previously thought unaffected by the war.

And then it was time to go home.

The final display in The Flanders Field museum states that this was the war to end all wars,

it wasn't, and there is a list of every war that has taken place since 1918 above the exit.

It is important that we continue to remember and also retain hope that a future generation will adopt an alternative means of settling national or religious differences than through armed conflict

"Well then you ask, why did men apparently unhesitatingly go forward in attack and capture strongpoints sometimes with reckless bravery? The answer is simple - I must repeat that there is no alternative to the firing squad but to go forward and you do your damnedest to kill the men who are trying to kill you. If you do not, you just die. In all this fighting when trenches and strongpoints are captured you are not a hero - you are obeying not man's instinct to kill, but man's instinct to live by killing the man who would kill you. Those that believe in the inevitability of war will always emphasise that man has an inherent killer instinct, that it is human nature and little can be done about it.
Another "Old Lie" a perfidious Old lie.
Man is not born a killer, it is the society in which he grows up which makes him one and that society must continually reiterate the lie to justify the act of killing in war.
I never wanted to kill anyone,
but I did...."

Private W.H.A Groom 1/5th Battalion London Regiment (Rifle Brigade)

Clicks Playlist of Joan Baez, Bill Withers and Country Joe and the Fish and sits back slightly dumbstruck, but grateful never to have experienced war at first hand.

Tremours Down The Thigh Bone, Shakin All Over

Apologies but there are a few parish messages to which we must attend,

First up a link to an article sent to me recently by a friend.

It's a bit of a worry

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/in-puzzle-of-oklahomas-earthquakes-new-data-may-provide-clues.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_nn_20160908&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=74230850&_r=0

Trogir, Ciovo and Slatine

A Previously Unknown Henry Moore in the Medium of Cucumber

Back again, albeit in an Olympic reverie.

But first we shall attend to Malham Tarn, where a press release, gleefully accepted by national radio, trumpeted the release of a hundred captive bred Water Voles into the Tarn to boost numbers of Ratty.

The News piece revealed that this centum of voles had been raised on carrots and apples, and I confidently predict that in the coming weeks a well meaning Joe Public will don walking shoes to fling all manner of fruit and veg into the Tarn to sustain the poor creatures

This release contradicts current thinking with regard to re-establishing populations of freshwater fish stocks, where the release of captive bred stock and supplementary feeding are strongly discouraged.

Why was this release of Water Voles made public? Why not wait a few years until the Tarn has been repopulated successfully and has a sustainable population of Voles, because hey kids, a lot of that first hundred ain't gonna make it.

I like a Vole, but I can't help thinking that the Malham Tarn lot have been let down by this press release.

Anyway,

We love the Olympics,

there I said it

it's good to emote, innit?

Rowing, Sailing, Boxing, Gymnastics the full gamut (even Equestrian) holds Madam and myself rapt.

The Football season ( a winter sport) started recently, and premiership matches screened live during the Olympics seem a little vulgar as hey Tony Cascarino (Is he still playing?) et al, these Olympics achieve much without the wash bag and headphone culture. During an entertaining half hour with Prodnose on a recent Saturday morning Roger Black revealed that Athletes rock up at the track in their kit and do not shower at the stadium after the event, which is one in the eye (or ear) for the old adage of scrubbing behind the ears.

Compare post event/match interviews of Olympians and Footballers and your Olympian is a far more rounded individual with a capacity for stringing sentences together, win or lose, in the depths of recovery from physical exertion. But then can we all remember that wiseacre Alan Pardew who, irked at the success of London 2012, sought to remind the British Public that footballers too are capable of Corinthian deeds, before head butting a footballer twenty years his junior playing against a team he was managing at the time a couple of weeks later.

Watch and learn Premiership footballers, you do not possess the god like status that you think your wage packet infers, that status is left for true Olympians, and hey Brian Cox, if you happen to find another planet somewhere, can we please, ignore the campaign for Planet Sheldon and name the thing Usain?

Or perhaps Planet Nick Skelton, as a gold medal at the age of 58 has isnpsired me to search for Pole vault poles on ebay.

Well done everyone, Well done!

Returning to Alan, the weed cut is on and having gone through much of the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs on my clever wireless headphones, I have purchased an audio book to occupy the few grey cells that remain during Poldarkian swishings with my scythe. I Partridge - we need to talk about Alan is a permanent fixture on my phone and is a work of genius, but today I have cut weed to a book that pushes it close.

My Lords, Ladies and Gentleman, I give you......

Toast on Toast, Cautionary Tales and Candid Advice.

I knew the book was out,

but like I Partridge, We need to talk about Alan, I wanted to hear the evidence from the horse's mouth.

If you were walking near the river sometime today and saw a chap up to his chest in water laughing his scythe off then this book was the cause.

Alan Partridge and Adrian Mole stand like beacons as true seers of their respective ages, and I'll confess to being a bit spoony over Matt Berry (The IT Crowd, Mighty Boosh, House of Fools, Snuff Box) he's a genius, and Steven Toast now run Alan and Adrian close in the race for a place at the centre of my heart,

Just outside family, close friends and the black dog obviously.

Returning to matters of work,

But before I do, I'm typing this blind, as the letters on the replacement keyboard purchased from Peking after I inadvisably marinated my laptop in vin rouge, have all rubbed off.

I used to get quite cross with Sting in his free jazz phase when he played a bass guitar with no fret marks, and once came close to taking him up on the matter when I passed through his garden on the Avon a few years ago on a business trip, but having banged out guff on a keyboard free of markings over the past few weeks I can concur with the Sting that it is a freer way of playing/typing,

I've never felt more alive, it's akin to riding a bike commando,

A practice also promoted by Sting during his Tantric sex phase, and a significant proportion of the cast of Carry on Camping.

August fishing is what it is, and as ever we look forward to September. Fish are being caught and a look through the book will confirm that with regard to numbers, catches are all that they should be for the season and well up on last year when water quality was significantly poorer. Many anglers have remarked on the dearth of big fish. Not one for a grey area or obfuscation I consulted catch records for the last thirty years in search of FACTS ( a word that seems to demand capital letters in the modern age) and the average size of fish caught each season has dropped these past two seasons.

We don't stock heavily, and brown trout introduced have rarely exceeded a pound and half in weight throughout the past twenty odd years. There are fish in the book of many pounds, the size of which have not appeared in recent seasons, and at this point it may be pertinent to examine where these "bigger" fish came from. First up, we didn't put them in. They were either derived from natural stock, or were canny stocked fish who matured in the river and hung around for several seasons (mixed sex) and spawned successfully.

This valley now plays host to a herd of Otters, and the big fish are the first to end up dead on the bank and last November/ December there were significantly fewer sexually mature fish kicking up redds in this stretch of river, which is a worry.

While many will wax lyrical on the merits of apex predators, this one is starting to impact upon the fish population of this river valley. It is not just the big trout that end up half eaten on the river bank, big pike, big roach and big grayling have all been hit hard these past two years, and in the lake the fifty forty year old carp were killed in a space of a couple of winters along with a shoal of bream weighing between five and eight pound.

Don't get me wrong, Otters should be present in this valley, but Unlike Hugh Finty Tittingshill, Tarka doesn't do sustainable fishing and we are currently heading towards a situation where the fish population falls to a sufficiently low level that the Otters are forced to move elsewhere for a viable food source and face their principle present day foe, the motor car.

There is a sensible conversation that needs to be begun , (don't expect any organisation ending in the word "Trust" ( Angling Trust excepted) to put their head above the parapet) and not on social media or the internet, and reading this back I anticipate the customary anonymous emails, so I'll get my response in early in that I am immensely proud that biodiversity has increased substantially on this stretch of river during my twenty five season tenure, Otters included, but for some aquatic environments in the UK, a burgeoning Otter population has fast becoming the elephant in the room.

Moving on, and with a nod to Esther Rantzen, who I once had the pleasure of meeting (I seem to have picked up a name dropping habit in recent weeks) and can confirm is a very nice lady and a sharp cookie to boot, here's a photo of an unusually shaped salad vegetable,

Ladies and Gentleman I give you,

Cucumber by Henry Moore.

If anyone would like to buy this unique work of art in the medium of cucumber by the leading sculptor of his age, please send several thousand pounds to:

Vegetables are far more comfortable in their own skin now we're out of Europe
Bransbury
Hampshire
Engerland


Cyril

Butterflies, Olympics and Green Gyms

Well fishing's slowed up a little, but not to the extent that it did midsummer of 2015. There are bits of algae present and blanket weed is on the rise, but then it is August. Compare the photo on here twelve months ago featuring foam and cloudy water with the current state of play and it is clear that water quality was being impacted upon upstream in 2015 and whatever shenanigans were going on upriver are now diminished or have ceased.
Many fish concentrate on feeding subsurface with daytime surface feeding fish rising sporadically to a steady trickle of olives and hatches of sedge that build from mid afternoon on.

And at that point I'll break off to attend to some of the nonsense currently employed by media regarding the Olympics.
Despite the best efforts of the written press in recent months, I predict that many will welcome a sporting event that, the Russian bear aside, manages to bring unity to a disparate world, and hey naysayers over the last few weeks in the written press, good luck Rio (not you Ferdinand you lucked out years ago) I am sure the games will be a great success. If ever a year needed a lift with a few life affirming tales then it is 2016 and I hope the Olympics and Para Olympics will deliver on that score wherever.

But somebody add some barley straw or introduce tench and lillies to the fetid pit that Tom Daley and his compatriots are required to tumble into.

In the middle of the night a twenty one year old called Adam won the first medal for Old Albion. A dedicated individual who hadn't lost a race for two years, I was made aware of his triumph via Madam's phone, who, ever the newshound had wired it up for BBC news alerts.

Bleary eyed over breakfast (we couldn't get back to sleep) we discussed the merits of smart phones and tablets in the bedroom, but agreed to hold hands and watch the highlights of the race later that day.

Which we tried to do on three occasions,

but rather than show the one minute race in its entirety, the BBC prefer (and I blame Eddie Butler for this fad, after setting slow motion rugby players to poor prose) we are treated to super slow mo vignettes as the commentator delivers his piece (with much editing and several takes) Look at the camera we've got and didn't our commentary go well?

Hubris doesn't come close,

Adam's achievements could never be improved by some digital sexing up of the pictures and audio. Just show the thing as it happened in real time with live commentary, warts an all and then step back and say well done.

The red button is worth a push, as it offers several sports sans commentator and pundit, which can be quite refreshing at times.

Anyway, we've a meadow full of butterflies, drawn to hemp agrimony, that like much of the other vegetation is a foot taller than previous years. The willows have also enjoyed 2016 and have put on substantial growth, although one of the eight year old cricket bat willows has shed all of its leaves and cashed in its chips, which is a little surprising as willows thrive in this parish.

There are rumours of some funny raptors about. I have seen a ring tailed hen harrier with my own eyes, and the merlin is a given, but four chaps with cameras were waiting on the bridge over the A303 for a honey buzzard that has taken up residence in Harewood Forest and there is talk of goshawks getting jiggy in the valley. One of our regulars described a bird that could have been such a thing up near the flight pond, and I carry my camera in readiness, but have yet to confirm the sighting, although I was distracted by the butterflies (see photos).

And well done Wendy Craig for that, we revisited a few episodes when we last experienced a broadband connection capable of delivering such a service, could have been rural France, Seville or that Croatian island an hour off the coast of Split, I don't remember exactly but it was definitely in Europe.

I didn't appreciate how clever Butterflies was as a child of Primary school age, and at this point can we all tip a tile to Dolly Parton.

Dig deep, and you'll find that this gal made a significant contribution to the backing track of three decades or more.

Cricket can be all consuming at this time of year for three parts of our family, although Child A did attend a cricket match last weekend if only to ignore match proceedings and gas with friends on the boundary, which is part of the charm of club cricket, and I too find myself increasingly distracted by the social scene on the boundary and miss large chunks of the game. Fortunately Madam is the scorer supreme (The Hampshire Cricket Leagues' scorer of the year 2014 sash hangs from the post of our bed) and fills me in on matters I missed while giving forth elsewhere when we get home. A regular visitor to the ground is a former Times cricket correspondent, he's lived all his life a few yards up the road and even in his ninetieth year shows a keen interest in all the Longparish sides.

He's brim full of knowledge on many subjects including fishing, particularly on chalk streams that he has lived on all of his life. He kindly took me to a stretch of the Avon on several occasions where he held a rod and he fished many weekends at home on the Dever and even filled in on the beating line on shoot days a couple of times with his spaniel Googly.

We attended his 70th birthday party , his 80th birthday party and earlier this week his 90th birthday party, we hope to be invited to his 100th birthday party as ten minutes in his company on the boundary remains one of the highlights of any game of cricket wherever it's played.

And so to the Duke of Wewstminster, not the pub, but Gerald Grosvenor who passed away this week

For a few years we stocked his two acre garden pond at Eaton Hall with our home grown three pound brown trout for his children to catch. On the first occasion I was given a tour of the estate by the deer manager, who had a meat processing room that Waitrose would envy and a narrow gauge railway circumnavigating the estate to transport the seven hundred or so fallow culled each year.

I didn't meet Gerald on that occasion, but I was well acquainted with the estate as, each year during my formative years our cub scout and scout troops undertook a sponsored walk about the premises to raise money for I forget what. However our paths did cross once when a quorum of my fourteen year old friends travelled south via back lanes from Tarvin to Llangollen to sojourn in my parents caravan for the weekend.

To celebrate crossing the Anglo Welsh border my introverted friend chose to pop a wheelie down the middle of the B Road on which we were travelling , at which point the Duke of Westminster rounded the corner ahead in his green range rover causing my friend to abort his wheelie and the duke to swerve his range rover and wag a finger.

I met his wife once when I was 17. I was charged with presenting her with a cheque for the Save the Children fund after a group of us were sponsored to push a supermarket trolley from Cheshire to London, and she was radiant throughout (the presentation, she didn't come on the trolley push)

It will have been written many times, but he did an awful lot for Field Sports

If confirmation were needed that a certain sector of the UK's urban population is increasingly disconnected from an everyday tale of country life (and hey Archers I'm including you in this) then an article in a newspaper last Saturday espousing the virtues of "green gyms" shall serve as exhibit A, B or C in any case presented.

The writer (or his house) paid money to join a "Green Gym" for a week, where the group undertook physical work in the outdoors in simple clothing, breaking occasionally to connect with the rest of the group through easy unpressured conversation. Accommodation and provisions were simple fayre, often taken in the field. Courses are being run throughout the year, and are reasonably priced at £600 pp.

I believe people pay good money for mindfulness classes in which they are encouraged to clear their heads (and their purse) by concentrating on a single spot while sitting in a yoga type position.

I've said it before, and I predict a wicker fishing basket will be the next yogic accoutrement required to attain the third level of enlightenment,

but fishermen who fish the float or the quiver tip have known this for some time.

On several occasions last year, four or five people paid money to lift weights and be shouted at by a man who had travelled many miles in the name of "Boot camp" exercise, while Ludgershall and myself chopped and stacked logs on the other side of the fence,

you could have helped us out for free and we wouldn't have been anywhere near as shouty.

Last winter Lord Ludgershall and myself spent many months in the woods attending to trees.

This year Professor Ludgershall and myself will be running a series of short courses that promise to promote mental clarity via the medium of gentle cardio exercise, moving wood and ribald conversation

Refreshments and lunch provided each day and will be taken outdoors.

Packages are individually tailored to the client's needs

Standard package - £200 pp per week (I think that's reasonable)

Gold package - £300 pp per week - includes proper coffee/posh teabag, "non jacket potato" lunch option and scented candles

Please note, accommodation not included in either of the above packages, there is a Travelodge just up the road.