Summer is over. The grey clouds are rolling into their debenture seats over the Wiltshire countryside aided by a rather chilling northerly breeze. It signals the end to a rather wonderful summer and the start of getting work and life back on track.

I’ve spent the last two months more or less fishing all day, everyday and it has been marvellous! I’ve travelled all over Scotland, exploring hidden hill lochs, never before fished burns, climbed mountain peaks and generally enjoyed myself thoroughly. One of the highlights was a week at Camasunary on the Isle of Skye. The house is three miles from the nearest road, has no electricity and very few mod cons. What is lacks in creature comforts it more than makes up for with absolutely stunning scenery, prolific fishing and an abundance of lobster. We ate and lived like kings and queens feasting off the seabed, rivers and lochs. I also spent quite the most perfect week on Loch Etive feasting on muscles and catching some specimen weight spurdogs with my wonderful girlfriend Eliza (pictured casting a line of the River Tay earlier this year – she’s a darn fine fly fisherman and frequently shows up all the boys!)

The big news is that I am no longer working with Ben in a full time capacity but I am going to continue to manage all his forthcoming polar expeditions. Instead I am looking for pastures new and a full time career elsewhere. I’ve spent the last two years telling my career driven, banking and accounting friends to leave their dull, unrewarding city jobs and to start following their dreams. With this in mind, I tried not to fall into their trap by turning down several lucrative London based jobs and opting instead to do what has been in the back of my mind for some time now and enter the world of fly fishing as a career rather than just a hobby.

I am going to be working for a small but extremely good company called Where Wise Men Fish, which specialise in guided fly fishing expeditions to every corner of the world. It’s headed up by a chap called Justin Maxwell Stuart who seems to be one of a handful of people in the country who are more keen on fly fishing than I am! It will hopefully offer an opportunity  help grow a globally renowned company and give me chance to photograph and organise some really rather exciting trips around the globe.

I’m going to be based out of Wiltshire until Christmas and i’m relishing the chance to live in the countryside again and not have to commute across the big smoke everyday on my folding bike, tube and London buses.

The other exciting news is that I am planning a new adventure for summer 2010 with a great friend and rather inspirational adventurer, cyclist, photographer and speaker, Alastair Humphreys. It’s going to involve a long walk (not quite London to Asia distance but definitely not a Sunday afternoon stroll), a bit of a paddle with packrafts and a lot of wild camping and survival. We will be documenting the trip with photography, film and an expedition blog. I’ve had expedition goose-bumps for a while now as the maps, books and kit slowly start to build up.

Autumn tactics is one of my favourite Chicane tracks and was a top 5 song on the soundtrack to my London to Istanbul walk. Their new song Poppiholla (based on the track “Hoppípolla” by Sigur Rós) is rumoured to have been written/mixed as a little tribute to some tired feet and story telling in a small bar in the French Alps. As I said… rumoured.