Felbrigg Hall Norfolk
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:16 am
This happened over 35 years ago and to this day has had me perplexed and bemused as I have no logical explanation as to what happened....
A since departed good friend of mine and I decided to go to Felbrigg Hall lake for the tench that were reputed to abound in the water. As neither of us were old enough to drive we enlisted the help of 'dads taxi' to drop us off in the afternoon at the woods close to the lake. We set up, had a brew and had a chat, with the now present bailiff, who seemed like a decent sort of chap-full of stories including the 'Headless Coachman' that trundles by the exact spot that we were fishing on exactly the evening that we were fishing!
On his departure we had a chuckle about him trying to wind us up and dismissed the banter with a 'he had better try harder if he thinks that is going to spook us' type of attitude so typical of teenagers. We fished on into the night with no more references to the ghosts etc although, deep down I think both of us were slightly bricking it. We re-baited and cast all 4 rods into an arc of water to cover a decent amount of water, set the bite alarms, bobbins etc and settled down in the chairs with another brew (by now of the Carlsberg type) and my mates Old Holborn.
At close to midnight the most bizarre thing happened, all 4 rods went of at exactly the same time-no gentle rises and dips of the bobbins but a full on smash with the optonics screaming the bobbins smashing into the underside of the rods and two of the rods actually coming unseated from the rod rests.
We struck into 2 of the rods and nothing, checked the other 2 and nothing-what the hell was that all about? We both looked at each other, muttered a few expletives, looked around us in the vain hope that we would see something that would go some way to explain what had just happened-nothing. Being teenagers we laughed it off but deep down (well, not too deep down in my case, and the same I suspected with Simon) we were scared!
We had no choice but to sit it out for the rest of the night until we got our lift back in the morning and hardly a word was spoken until we were back in the car on our way home. Didnt even catch!
Needless to say, we never fished Felbrigg at night again but night fished plenty of other waters, including the notorious St. Benetts Abbey, without any problem.
I recounted this to my wife last week and I could visibly see the goosebumps come up on her skin.
A since departed good friend of mine and I decided to go to Felbrigg Hall lake for the tench that were reputed to abound in the water. As neither of us were old enough to drive we enlisted the help of 'dads taxi' to drop us off in the afternoon at the woods close to the lake. We set up, had a brew and had a chat, with the now present bailiff, who seemed like a decent sort of chap-full of stories including the 'Headless Coachman' that trundles by the exact spot that we were fishing on exactly the evening that we were fishing!
On his departure we had a chuckle about him trying to wind us up and dismissed the banter with a 'he had better try harder if he thinks that is going to spook us' type of attitude so typical of teenagers. We fished on into the night with no more references to the ghosts etc although, deep down I think both of us were slightly bricking it. We re-baited and cast all 4 rods into an arc of water to cover a decent amount of water, set the bite alarms, bobbins etc and settled down in the chairs with another brew (by now of the Carlsberg type) and my mates Old Holborn.
At close to midnight the most bizarre thing happened, all 4 rods went of at exactly the same time-no gentle rises and dips of the bobbins but a full on smash with the optonics screaming the bobbins smashing into the underside of the rods and two of the rods actually coming unseated from the rod rests.
We struck into 2 of the rods and nothing, checked the other 2 and nothing-what the hell was that all about? We both looked at each other, muttered a few expletives, looked around us in the vain hope that we would see something that would go some way to explain what had just happened-nothing. Being teenagers we laughed it off but deep down (well, not too deep down in my case, and the same I suspected with Simon) we were scared!
We had no choice but to sit it out for the rest of the night until we got our lift back in the morning and hardly a word was spoken until we were back in the car on our way home. Didnt even catch!
Needless to say, we never fished Felbrigg at night again but night fished plenty of other waters, including the notorious St. Benetts Abbey, without any problem.
I recounted this to my wife last week and I could visibly see the goosebumps come up on her skin.