Happy Campers!

This Summer we decided to buy ourselves a tent, nothing spectacular you understand just a cheapish Hi-Gear five berth job, with the intention of getting away for a couple of nights here and there during the school holidays and allowing our two girls the experience of sleeping under canvas in the great outdoors.

Having given our new purchase a trial run at Stratford racecourse a little while back it was now time for a proper family outing, the site we chose was Greenhill Leisure Park which is situated close to Oxford, in the village of Bletchingdon. This place ticked all the necessary boxes as it is only about an hour from home and is a working farm with plenty of animals for the kids to look at, there is a relatively well stocked and reasonably priced shop, good, clean toilet and shower facilities and a games room complete with pool and table tennis tables where I scored 68,000,000 points in a game of pinball but was swiftly and soundly defeated in a gory shoot em up game due to a twitchy trigger finger I have had since taking part in a particularly tense game of Cowboys and Indians in 1976.
Most importantly of all there are also two small lakes offering free fishing to residents, one being a carp pool and the other featuring tench, bream and roach.



Jessica, who is three, has just recently begun to sit with me when I watch fishing programmes on TV and has shown a real interest in having a go herself. Aimee, our four year old, has shown no interest whatsoever.
So when Sheryl, the two kids and I climbed the slope to the bottom (mixed) lake it was with the intention of Jess and I doing the fishing while Sheryl kept Aimee amused.


As things turned out and as is often the case with young children Jess very soon lost all interest in looking at the orange dot bobbing amongst the ripples and went off with her mum to look at some nearby goats. Luckily Aimee was suitably intrigued to ask for a go with the rod and to my surprise and delight she took to it with real enthusiasm.



First she insisted on knowing how many fish my dad and I had caught the day before at Jubilee, when I told her that daddy had caught two and grandpa had caught four she was soon settling down in her own determined little way to catch five fish.

With a little help from me Aimee soon caught her first fish which was a small skimmer, razor blades we used to call them, and she looked really pleased with herself. We went on to catch the five fish she was looking for and I even caught myself a couple of skimmers, the biggest being around a pound.

On day two Aimee was keen to fish again so the two of us went off to the lake again. This time our loosefed maggots produced a more rapid response from the small silver fish and we caught from the off, therefore Aimee had more time to practise handling the rod and reel on her own and recognising bites which she did very well. She was also soon confident with handling and returning the string of small roach and bream which came our way.

Just as Sheryl and Jessica came up the slope to tear us away from the fishing Aimee hooked and landed her biggest fish to date, a skimmer of around three quarters of a pound. She beamed with pride as she held it for her mum to take a photo and I must admit I probably did too.



Jess was prompted to have another go just to round things off and together we soon caught a little roach which she seemed happy enough with.

When we got home the next morning Aimee said to me "Daddy, next time you take me fishing I want to catch a really big one." Don't we all Aimee, don't we all!