Last summer I planned a weekentrip, targeting perch in a river an hours drive from home. I came home from work friday afternoon, and loaded the car with all my stuff. But I could not find my brolly. A fine, new Fox Matrix brolly, bought from Tim Aplin a few months earlier. My old Brollnets brolly was a goner, leaky and worn out after years of service.
I had used the brolly two weeks earlier, and managed to convince myself that I had left it on the bankside. It was not in the direction I was going to drive, but I had to have look. It might still be there.
It wasn't. And on my way there, I also remembered that I had forgot my bivvypegs at home. Standing on the bankside, furious for the loss of the brolly, I decided to drive to Sweden instead. I was halfway to the border, had a full tank of diesel, and money to spend in my pockets.
There is a well stocked tacklestore a few hours drive across the border. If I couldn't get pegs, maybe I could buy a new bivvy. I wasn't that pleased with the brollystyle bivvy I already had. And a new brolly, of course. The whole idea was stupid, but it somehow made sense, right there and right then.
So off I went. A few hours down the road the daylight started fading, and I had to find a place to spend the night. I found a secluded spot not far from the road, in the middle of a residential area, and there beeing no wind, managed to erect the bivvy with the stormpoles as the only support. And what fell out of my bivvybag, but the missing brolly. But there were still the pegs.
Next morning I took off again. I planned to have breakfast at a roadside restaurant. But they had not opened for the day. A sign on the door read Opens at 10.00. How strange, I thought, and jumped back behind the wheel.
A few miled further down the road it dawned upon me. It was the midsummer weekend. And no swede work during the midsummer weekend. No shops are open. No swede over the age of consent are sober during the midsummer festival. They party from friday to sunday. Non stop.
I had just a few miles to go, I had to see for myself. The tackle store was closed. Of course it was. Later I learned that they went home on thursday night, and didn't return to work before monday morning. Still not sober, half of them.
So there I was, in the middle of Sweden, at 10 o'clock on a saturday morning. I used most of the day driving to my original destination. The Big Perch river. I arrived late in the afternoon, found the swim and had two hours of lousy fishing before the rain sat in.
To top it all, there was a national cyckle championship to be staged in the area the day after. Being afraid to get stuck in trafic, I packed and drove home.
500 miles of driving for two hours of lousy fishing. That's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
