BLAGDON 281 



late. By that I mean a year too late for great baskets 

 of monsters running from four pounds to eight or nine 

 pounds. It will, I trust, never be too late for a fisher- 

 man to know and love Blagdon. It is still, and always 

 will be, a delightful place, and though its fishing has 

 altered in character, I am not sure that it is not even 

 more interesting now than it was of old. I cannot 

 speak, of course, with the experience of Lorenzo and 

 those others who reaped such a harvest in 1905, but I 

 did just get a glimpse of the golden age on that open- 

 ing day of 1906. I learnt what it was like to have a 

 real big Blagdon trout bending the rod and filling the 

 soul with terror ; I saw the end of the old order. And 

 since then I have watched it giving place to the new, and 

 though for that great lost opportunity there must always 

 be regret, I am not sure that I did not enjoy my last 

 visit to Blagdon more than the first. 



The lake, as most people know, is one of the reser- 

 voirs which supply the needs of the great city of 

 Bristol;* but though the work of men's hands, it has 

 as much beauty as any place of Nature's making. At 

 one end there is a great stone dam, and there is some 

 suggestion of prose about the buildings behind it, but 

 turn your back on them and you have nothing but 

 poetry. On the right lies Blagdon village, scattered 

 delightfully over twin spurs of Blackdown, a fortunate 

 village, which seems to have grown naturally in the 

 most becoming manner, not too crowded nor yet too 



* Information as to tickets, etc. (the charge for each rod is IDS. 

 per day for bank fishing, 205. if one fishes from a boat, which has 

 to be booked some time beforehand as a rule), can be obtained 

 from Mr. Alfred J. Alexander, Bristol Waterworks Company, 

 Bristol. 



