CHAPTER V. 



May 



MAY DAY ON THE LAMBOURN (1900). 



HAVING acquired a rod on a piece of this cele- 

 brated little river, I decided to run down and 

 look over the water. The gentleman through 

 whom I got the fishing, an old friend of mine, 

 asked me to take my rod and get a trout or two, and 

 see what condition they were in, so as to decide if the 

 water should be open in May, as usual. Last year the 

 fish were hardly fit to be taken for at least a fortnight 

 later than the usual date, and he was anxious to know 

 how they were getting on this season. 



Leaving London by the 9 a.m. train, Newbury was 

 reached about half-past eleven, and a few minutes' 

 travel by the Lambourn Valley Light Railway brought 

 me to my destination. An extraordinary concern is 

 this same railway, where all one's accepted notions of 

 railway travelling and railways are upset. Here we 

 have a line with no signals, stations without platforms 

 or stationmasters, while the very train itself (there is 

 only a single line) has first and second, but no third- 

 class carriages. The smoking carriage is at the two ends 

 and guard's van in the middle, the guard issuing tickets 

 en route. Still, primitive as the arrangements are, the 

 little railway is a boon to trout fishers, as otherwise, in 

 the immediate past, in order to get to the water the 

 fisherman had to walk or drive varying distances, say, 

 from six to twelve miles, according to where his fishery 



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