In northern France, the end of the grayling season and the beginning of a trout season. Magical journey continues. This is la Ternoise: a surviving, and improving, chalk stream, at Tilly Capelle. We started the new trout season here. Wojtek with streamer, me with nymph. This is Wojtek’s first trout; so typically Ternoise, so like a young sea-trout.Before we moved on to the Aa to find the last of the season’s grayling, and the possibilities beginning with dry fly.High waters, stained, and very cold. Cold air too, with north-easterlies, and the trout were not very active, even when the LDOs hatched, while the grayling saved the day. Ouve Wirquin and then Wavrans.Sparse hatches and, in truth, grayling feeding more reliably on nymph, on Hydros, though the PTN jig scored most heavily for me.Cold, and so beautiful. So full of promise. Early spring, before it arrives in England.And it’s a journey, right, so we went south, to the Normandy beaches. This is Sword, where the British landed in 1944 at the beginning of Overlord, grasping Europe back from tyranny and evil.And Juno – combined British and Canadian landing point.So peaceful now. 70-odd years ago, it was not like this. A different sort of beginning. A couple of weeks later, after this photo; Brussels, and we find ourselves, our Europe, pulverised by atrocity again.