How many times have I heard those words before.

Every autumn, even if it is only for a day, I visit the Vyrnwy to greet the returning salmon as they reach their winter terminus on the gravels below Dolanog Weir.

It is a long journey for me from home in Devon (a mere trot compared to what Salar has to travel), so I have to plan weeks in advance.   Hence my pre-emptory sounding out of my spouse on what we should do at half term.   This year, as in most preceding years, being the considerate husband, I enquired whether my partner Sandra might like to accompany me and spend a few idyllic days in the Welsh hills...

"We could book the cottage at Mill Farm (already booked), go for walks, visit the bookshops in Machynlleth (Sandra is an avid reader), eat out in the local pubs and restaurants. ......there wouldn't be any cooking to do ..... Well it was only a suggestion."
"I might perhaps just manage a couple of hours one afternoon for a bit of grayling fishing ... only if the conditions are right",  I added as I started to pack a considerable amount of tackle into the deeper recesses of the car's boot.  "I really just want to go to see the salmon again, perhaps photograph them.  The rest of the time we can just walk in the woods, pick a few mushrooms for a casserole... have you packed your sketch book?"

"I thought you said there'd be no cooking to do."   "What?, well no, I mean I'll make the casseroles of course."

Sandra had not been to Dolanog for over two years.  I knew she would not take kindly to me fishing all day.  I promised myself to be on my best behaviour: break her in gently to the possibility of that the few hours fishing one afternoon out of four might become just a little longer.

As it turned out, my piscatorial planning was more than a little optimistic.

It had been raining hard over the weekend, and flood warnings, with red and amber alerts, abounded for the local rivers as we set off in the early hours of Monday morning.  As we were going for four days I was not too depressed:  the upper Vyrnwy is a very steep mountainous river and never remains in spate for long.  Besides there is the Lake and its dam ten miles upstream which help to halt the run-off.  Thinking ahead to the swollen river I decided to collect a few brownie points by suggesting that we stop at Hay-on-Wye for a good part of the day, browsing its 34 bookshops.

Many years ago when we first visited Hay, its second hand book prices were on a par with elsewhere in the UK, and, as they had such a vast selection on all topics, it was a great place to go.  These days the booksellers have caught on to the fact that if people make a special day trip to buy books there, then they are hardly likely to go home empty handed.
Consequently book prices have rocketed.   C'est la vie.

Any how, the day remained dry, some good books were found and the beer was excellent.. Time for a change of driver.  That's the advantage of taking along a companion!

When we finally reached our destination it was getting dark, and driving into the farm yard the headlights picked out a line of driftwood resting against the garden fence.

"Had some rain then John?",  I asked as I was greeted by a huge hand thrust towards me from the darkness of the farmyard.  "Just a little",   was the dour reply.  "We came back from holiday ourselves on Saturday night, .... Found the yard under water.  The Landrover was in one and a half foot of water in the barn.  The river's dropped since then as you can see."    ... Well I couldn't see that much, but I took John's word for it.

After unloading our gear into the chalet, we joined John and his wife Gwyn at the farm for a few beverages and a long overdue catch up on all that had been happening since I was last there.

Our arrival seemed to herald yet another turn in the weather, and as we hurried back to the chalet later that night, the wind was already tearing at the trees, and the outside lights showed the rain being driven horizontally across the yard.

You can always hear the river running merrily just outside the window at night... however, the few malts followed by the few Irish's in the company of John and Gwyn ensured that we slept heavily that night, and we heard nothing till morning.

By ten o'clock, the rain had ceased, but the river continued to rise a little.

Fortunately, the road to the farm had another exit over the hill, so we decided to visit Lake Vyrnwy in her autumn slendour, if it had not been all washed away during the night.

Usually the level is way down from the sill, because all the water gets drawn off from the bottom for Liverpool long before levels approach the overflow mark.  It then flows through a pipeline drilled through the mountains.

The remaining water is used to supplement the R Severn at times of low flow.

The speed at which they raced made it difficult to capture the scene.  In a moment a vivid scene would be gone, or if it stayed long enough to photo, then you would get soaked for you trouble at your end.  But startling colours.

Neither he nor the boat were there when we returned later, so I assume that he got it going.

There were white horses on the lake and I have never seen such a feed lane.

Time and again the sun would burst through and kindle fire in the tops of the rowan on the wild hillside.

If only they were only half as full of lustrous liquid in the summer months when trout are in season....

Bala is said to be a magical place.   For me there is no magic.   A cup of coffee and we were gone again.

Small tree trunks, the morning's driftwood, littered the yard.

The afternoon sun was bright, and the sound of the weir was still deafening.

But there was hope for a better day tomorrow, and perhaps an hour or so grayling fishing to go with it.