Warwickshire Avon - Trots and Transtubstantiationalists (Barbel content)

Now there are wellness retreats costing thousands of pounds where earnest people sit cross-legged beside scented candles attempting to discover inner peace. Personally, I prefer a stick float, a pint of maggots, and a slightly damp meadow somewhere along an English river. The beauty of trotting a float is that absolutely nothing much happens. In modern life, this is a rare luxury. Emails don't trot downstream. Meetings don't trot downstream. Utility bills certainly don't trot downstream. A stick float, however, drifts away with the current carrying all worldly concerns towards the next county.The process is gloriously simple. Cast upstream, mend the line, watch the float. Repeat until tea time or darkness, whichever arrives first. It is difficult to feel stressed when concentrating on a tiny painted tip wobbling through a crease beneath an overhanging willow. Summer is the finest season for it. The river shrinks into polite proportions, dragonflies patrol like miniature helicopters,…