The White Snow of Rylstone

The sun is bright; the fields are gay,
With people in their best array,
Of stole and doublet, hood and scarf,
Along the banks of the crystal Wharf

A bitter cold but lovely walk when well wrapped up today at Bolton Abbey with mum and MrsB. Still two months off the start of the trout fishing season on the Wharfe, and midway through the one for grayling. I refer to this river as a mistress because of my total love of fly-fishing here, but even I would struggle to motivate myself to 'wet a line' with her and her cold heart today. Roll on April.

A cheap shot with my title change to the Wordsworth poem The White Doe of Rylstone, but I couldn't resist the lazy pun. The poem was set on the river here, as well as upstream in wider Rylstone and Cracoe district.

Fishing here goes back centuries, as do the fly-tying patterns I still use. I can sense that history as I wade the river and look on a landscape little changed. The history of the northern soft-hackled flies called the 'North Country Spiders' goes back to the days of a 17th century fisherman Izaak Walton, though with the presence of the Priory, general fishing has been a way of life here since at least the 12th century.

Postscript: Wordsworth's The White Doe of Rylstone has been described as a tale of feminine triumph over suffering. Still seems apt as Rylstone the village is famous for the Rylstone Women's Institute, who triumphed themselves when posing nude for a cancer charity calendar, as portrayed in the film "Calendar Girls".