Fishing and Flying

As a pilot, the author flies from the remote highlands of Scotland to the quiet creeks of Cornwall, packing into the gun wells of a fighter, or the baggage space ofa transport plane, his fishing-rod and a box of flies. In two hundred minutes he flies from London to a remote aerodrome in Scotland where, in the dusk of a silent evening, he catches a basket of trout. Almost the next moment he is forcing his way through an overgrown tangle in a Cornish valley in search of sea-trout.That the roar of a 2,000 horsepower engine should be compatible with a love of quiet waters is not so strange as it perhaps sounds. The author describes how he meta fighter pilot during the height of the Battle of Britain beside a Hampshire chalk stream. Both men had flown many hours that day – one of them in almost continuous combat with the enemy. Both discovered the peace for which they were struggling on the banks of that stream.