A walk on the wild side

With no fishing this weekend due to me being on Emergency Engineer for the next 7 days this post is for the many correspondence I've had from friends and acquaintances since getting back from my Scottish trip and my visit back to the River Avon, I have been asked if I could post some pictures of that particular stretch by some of the less able anglers who used to fish there but would like to see what the river is like nowadays as most are now unable to get to see it.

These are only a selection of the many photographs I have ... you will see that its not really changed over the years that much apart from the paths to & from the river which we were once able to run down are now long overgrown as they are not used.

Looking from the top of the Braes down to the river below.









and the reverse looking from the stretch you see looking back towards where the first picture was taken from.

The next set is a journey from Birkenshaw in Larkhall up past Canderside toll to beyond Stonehouse viaduct.

Heading upstream towards the Mull End

Looking up onto the Mull End, called this due to Clocksey Mill once standing there all but a ruin now as you will see from the pictures.

The Old Mill sluice

Looking back on the old Mill

Up onto the Wee Sawnie

Just out of view on the right side of the picture is a grass bank which during the summer months many families and kids used to walk down to to have picnics and days out by the river, swimming in the river and generally having a good time, nowadays its deserted all bar the odd beer can from kids who came down to get drunk & build a fire.

  

As a young angler I seen my biggest Grayling taken from this stretch by Wullie Durham a larkhall angler. The fish was in excess of 3lbs and returned to fight another day. 

Wullie used to hold a few River Avon records including the one for falling in the most but that's another story, one which I still believe stands today was the Biggest Brown trout a fish of 10lbs taken from a hole further down the river and that too was released to fight again, I used to have a picture of it but alas in my many years of moving around with the forces it has long since been lost which is a great shame, as it was a truly magnificent fish.

All around the Braes are seems of coal as this area of Lanarkshire was once an industrial hub for coal mining and through the years we often seen older folk mining the seems trying to extract the remnants of the coal from the long since gone mines, but as you can see the land is still prone to rock slides where people have been digging under them to try to get to the last of the coal.

Looking up onto the Cander mouth, where Cander water flows into the River Avon.

 This is a poem I discovered recently about this area of the Braes written by persons unknown and no date :

"Where the Cauder Joins The Avon"

Where the Cauder an the Avon,
Wi' a merry cheery din,
Kiss and fondle wi' ilk ither,
Ere they tumble into ane.
Where Nature free, unstinted,
Lets her fairest favours fa',
An' decks wi' sylvan grandeur
A' the braes of Birkenshaw.
Ah there I love to wander,
As the e'ening shadows fa'
Where the Cauder joins the Avon
Mang the braes o' Birkenshaw

Boiler Flat & Hole named after the old steam boiler that rests there rusting away.

heading upstream over the small falls

and onto the area known as the Auld Roman Brig

before finally coming out the Glen above the old ruins of once the longest railway viaduct in Scotland at Stonehouse.
 Larkhall having the highest railway viaduct in Scotland which unlike the stonehouse one is still standing in  a state of disrepair, where this one was dismantled years ago.

And that is my fishing up through the Braes, where at this point I would normally either climb the hill and grab a bus home in days gone past or if I felt really energetic fish it back down the way & into the darkness, which was the case last weekend all be it 13 hours of fishing & walking, the hill climb at the end finished me off.