Nothing left for us to do.

For us the Winter with it's less kind weather brings with it a quieter time of year. Days idle by full of thoughts and ponderings, leaving the hectic pace of the Summers mad months behind. There is little for us to do now that our boats have settled down to rest and restoration, we pack ourselves away and prepare for longer periods of workshop hibernation.

But just before we tuck up the blanket and plump up the pillow there are some lobster pots that need our attention, we must make them safe and secure, there's also lines, anchors, flags and buoys to coil up neatly and tidy away; which means splicing, refastening, replacing and improving and then maybe it'll be time for that cup of tea.

Those storm battered pots which have survived the endless tempest should be looked through, rebuilt, and reconstructed and reformed, enough we hope to fight another year. Expensive to replace important to renovate.

Let's not forget these nets that tried to catch the fish which fed those too few people and many seals who helped themselves. We'd better repair the holes and tears and broken mesh that look so unsightly, unseemly and detract from their erstwhile fishing abilities. A sheet, a reef, a bend, a hitch and another job done.

Then what about the boat? Before again she can and must float, there's always bits to do and tasks to complete and the often overlooked things we ought to think of doing. Bilges scrubbing, anti-fouling, scraping and scratching, washing and painting; so much painting but we need a dry day or two for that. We'll make her look her absolute best before the usual seasonal toll is taken.

There never seems very much to do as Winter nights grow dark and cold. We fall back into our idle sheds and cellars, garages and shacks where nothing really happens apart from we start all over again.

Seasons End

The Aurora lands her last sea weary lobster pots upon the over protective Quay wall, a season long hauled finally over, ready for the boats long awaited Winter over-haul.

A quiet time and tide belies the hidden strength of a sea that forms storms and battles with the hopes of man. Lobster pots, steel made, heavy rubber clad and ocean bottom bound suffer the knocks of swell and rock and leaping boat. Ropes taut hauled, trapped and chafed, punishment is met daily as they work to hunt the shellfish that will bless the plates of hotels and restaurants from here to Spain.

A tired end of year for these fishermen whose hard worked season has tried the hands and bones and rewarded age with aches, but there will be little rest for these men as now the work begins in dark and cold and draught full sheds, splicing lines and repairing damaged pots while readying boats once more for so soon again the Summer will call.

These fishermen whose unseen day is seen as romantic find little romance in the hours long days that is their chosen plight.
What else could we do? As fishermen we do enough and survive which is what we do the best. The question is, what else would we do? And for that, nothing is the answer.

Clovelly men are Herring men

Clovelly men are Herring men
They fish the briny bay,
Fill their nets with silver fish,
Each and every day.

From Michaelmas to Christmas,
The boats put out to sea,
From Harty Point to Rocks Nose,
And back to Clovelly.

Aboard the Picarooners,
With their nets across the tide,
Drift the ebb and flow boys,
They fish the coast with pride.

Fishermen after fishermen,
Have trod these harbour walls,
And watched for signs of weather,
So to answer the herrings call.

Shoot away the drift nets,
Watch the early light,
If we haven't found them,
We're back again tonight.

Haul away the headrope,
Bring the snood aboard,
Herrings fill our nets now,
It's to the shore we're bound.

Count out the fish upon the beach,
Three fish make a cast,
Forty cast a long hundred,
We'll catch a mease at last.

The days are long gone now,
When blue jersied men would stand,
And wait outside the Red Lion,
For the last boat out to land.

As long as I remember,
As long as I still fish,
There'll always be Clovelly herring,
To fill your sousing dish.

How it all began

On Christmas Eve in 1913 little Beatrice May Headon was picking Primroses near her home on Slerra Hill in Clovelly. The Reverend T L V Simkin distributed the parcels of Christine Hamlyn's Bread and Beef charity to the twelve most elderly poor of the parish, it was thought remarkable that many of the elderly recipients were the same as had recieved the gifts in 1912. This was a country on the eve of war, a village on the eve of change.

This is how it all began. Like many villages throughout the country Clovelly was about to commit many of her best men and women to a war that would alter the culture of a generation and set a course that would see an end to a way of life that had hardly changed in living memory. The people who were the very bedrock of the community, who lived, worked, loved and died, who were the very fabric of village society, would see differently the co-existence between those who do and those that have. The seemingly natural order was about to be tested beyond its limits and the village that would eventually emerge from the fields of war would never be the same again.

It is a journey we all know, the 1914-1918 War, trenches, bloody, muddy battles. But at home other battles were fought, the pain of loss, the fear of the unknown, the guilt of survival, the everyday continuation of village existence. It is as much a journey of new growth and new birth as that of fallen heroes, lost loved ones and the game of endless waiting. It is a Journey that begins here, with little Beatrice picking Primroses and the world turning towards war.

New Hope

Where did it all go? The time and tide have not waited, lost. adrift, a lonely sea and sky. But we are all still here. a quiet water runs by.

Changes are things we must constantly adapt to, the passage of years, the cruelty of misread relationships, the loss and suffering of grief.

My mother succumbed to cancer, the endless voyage of death, they were not good days. I believed in the trust of others only to be betrayed. A fall from grace.

Settled now. Peaceful now. The winter edging in to bring us colder days is welcome now. Gone the faux summer, gone the unrequited hopes of yesterday.

Today we look upon the harbour as our sanctuary, the comfortable wall encirles our lives and gives us purpose; it is our favourite season as herring nets bring full catches and the fishery that built Clovelly is alive and kicking in our boats.

There are few that remember the herring, it's rites and traditions. There are fewer who partake; I am the last full time herring man left and proud to be so.

So much has changed and yet we few remain.

The ill-judged years are behind us now and happy with joy in our hearts we wait, as surely as the tide will return, we wait. So Clovelly waits, having survived the flood and tourist famine, the ceaseless deluge. Yet people still find beauty in her damp demeanour. Clovelly waits and each day brings us closer to the next in-rushing wave and a new day of hope.

What's next?

Tempting waves dance across the harbour, breaking, foaming, laughing as each sea, grey as a memory, sly as a neighbour, is chased, racing to the shore. The season clock ticks on to another Autumn, when eager boats should be at their fishing best. But aching back days are gone, the once lively livelihood a thought lost, the time too late. The fish discarded, dry bilges untainted by deciduous scales. Where has it all gone?

The valley village prepares for Winter. Coal stacked porches hide the doors of warm as kitten kitchens. Clovelly unaware of its future, celebrates its yesterday with bought from Plymouth herrings, frozen ready for a festival too late to save the men that have given up caring.

The Clovelly Herring Festival is on November the 12th. The harbour will sigh under the ungrateful weight of 'buy me' stalls, welcome guests returning from past years will cheer the day, locally brewed ales will bring the day cheer. An occasional 'Local' herring may make an appearance, somewhere you may find a fisherman. People will be fed, the days aims met, all will be well, the coffers replenished.

What will be next for us? This arthritic year grinds on, closing doors in its wake, sunbaked holiday postcards delayed in flight, gather dust, teasing the calendar with holidays others have enjoyed. Each day rises with a new hurdle. Someone somewhere has got it worse but doesn't know it yet. In our familiar cold stone home we cuddle up beside the fire and wait for better news.

From whence I came

Many months have gone by and little done to record the happenings of a stagnant pond of wallowing people. Tides creep in and out of an unwatched harbour while some boatman stand obviously superior to those that shall remain behind waiting to close the door and make sure the lights are well and truly switched off.

Boats and Lobsters. Our life blood seeps away beneath the pebbled ground mingling with the mud stained and sea washed sand. People, once loud about the harbour, leave for term time commitments or hurried, booked and far flighted, sunnier apartments. We stand waiting; waiting for another season to rise, damp like about us.

Money is our direction and our obsession, we follow it, and we accommodate it, giving it unwarranted preference over the reality of our lives. I found myself escaping from the tortuous grip of Clovelly and delivered into the cold, hard North of Orkney. in the pursuit of a fair wage for a fair days work. A friend of mine is contracted to a group known as, 'Tidal Generation Limited,' a company sponsored by, 'Rolls Royce,' who are busy developing a turbine for the generation of electricity, using the strength of the tide. I was employed as Mate aboard his vessel and spent the time doing seaman like tasks such as splicing and whipping and general ropey jobs. During our time we were successful in deploying the turbine off the island called 'Eday'. just one of the many Orkney isles. Orkney was a remarkably beautiful place, sweeping islands and rough hewn shores. The people edging more towards Norwegian than Scottish, were famously kind and friendly. The weather was as you'd expect, trying and tempestuous one minute, still and brilliant the next. I flew in and flew out, I loved every minute and hope to get back.

There is so much to do. I have to set up and establish a smoke house in Clovelly, so I may smoke some of my Clovelly herring. Boats have to be worked on, cleaned, prepared, readied for whatever may happen next. Things, events catch up, usually when you're not watching. How does it happen that one minute you are getting things in order, and the next.... well the next minute you're sat beside a hospital bed where your mother lies with a collapsed lung, following a procedure to drain some fluid from that lung that went badly wrong. Days of worry, of stress and strain follow, family arrives from all quarters, too many visitors the nurses complain, but more arrive to see her, the room fills. Now all we can do is wait. Now all we do is wait. Funny how life seems to bring me back from whence I came and never seems to let me go. Now I wait.