The last day of the salmon-fishing season is its own motivation to get me working out new and more cunning ways of combining some pleasurable sport with a little culture on the side.
Three important factors needed to be keyed in before I could arrive at a sensible solution, though. First, Tim, my brother-in-law had just moved up to an area not too far away from Loch Lomond (the scene of our last holiday to the Trossachs).
Second, the school's half term was, sadly, coming to an end. And, thirdly, we hadn't fished for at least two weeks. Result? Book a cheap flight to Glasgow, hire a car and get Tim to sort out dates, times, permits and, most important of all, a reliable ghillie (fishing guide to the uninitiated). QED.
The family's first stop, after picking up our car at the airport, was Pollok County Park, situated on the south side of Glasgow, and home to the Burrell Collection.
A squirrel on an international stage, Sir William Burrell collected over 9 000 works of art, including paintings by Degas and Cezanne, sculptures by Rodin, European tapestries, Oriental art and ceramics, as well as artefacts from Egypt, Rome, Assyria and Mesopotamia.
Our next stop was the world-famous Glasgow Willow Tea Rooms in Buchanan Street, which were designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1904. Light lunches and old-fashioned teas are served in an intimate setting in which you can easily eavesdrop on the conversation at a neighbouring table if yours happens to flag.
Renfrew Street is home to the Glasgow School of Art where we managed to inherit the tail end of a tour of the contents of the Mackintosh Building, or "the Mac" as it is popularly known.
The real attraction, though, is the structure itself, a testament to the brilliance of its architect - the previously mentioned Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Our cultural enlightenment proved to be a deliberately brief experience, as brief as the above paragraphs suggest. The next stop for Tim and myself was Callander.
Caroline, Fiona, Angela and Sam (Tim's "partner"), however, decided to explore Stirling Castle, made famous by William "Braveheart" Wallace.
I'd never fished for salmon before and cutely imagined it was like trout fishing, only on a bigger scale.
Understandably, I felt a mixture of nerves and excitement. The conversation in the car en route revealed that my fishing mate was also raring to go.
Then suddenly, in mid-sentence, there it was, the river before us, running parallel to the main road and speaking its inimitable dialect of joy.
At the Meadow car park by the River Teith, we met our ghillie Ivar Campbell who, immediately after introductions, impressed upon us that he always caught "the first salmon of the season". He then proceeded to give us lessons in spey and roll casting on an adjacent stretch of green.
After a good few attempts, he impishly pronounced me "hopeless" and "totally uncoordinated" with a few extra Rs added to the third syllable.
I mumbled back something about playing a fair game of rugby some years ago but this impressed him not one jot. Tim, all concentration and dogged English determination, cracked his line like a lion-tamer, eliciting a pained "Yeehaah!" from some wit taking his constitutional along the Meadows' riverside path.
The town stretch (aka the Post Office Pool, I believe) is the most accessible of beats with Callander and its shops close behind you as you fish. The river is a hive of activity with a number of fishermen positioned roughly every 15m along its walkway using spinning rods and spoons, and with sufficient salmon rollicking in the water like ADHD children on tartrazine. I opted for a spinning rod while Tim fished traditionally a bit further downstream near the town's bridge.
After an hour or so, during a lull (for us) in proceedings, one of the locals hooked a salmon about 100m upstream, allowing us to watch as events unfolded before our bewildered eyes.
Towed, as if by a torpedo, he came hurtling down towards us with fisherman deftly side-stepping like a row of frightened flyhalves. Ivar, seated at a table enjoying his elevenses of coffee and doughnut, cried out: "It's a monster!" - whether as a form of encouragement or ironic aside, I never quite fathomed.
Our intrepid fisherman, colouring the air a deep shade of blue, suddenly found his rapid progress blocked by a fairly substantial shrub. Within an eye blink, he was propelled into the water, with 100m of line straining to breaking point. I stood amazed, wondering whether some abstruse point of etiquette dictated that I jump in to assist him. During that brief hiatus, his line snapped, bringing to a brief end his chorus of expletives and my sometime dilemma.
Our anthropological education continued at the nearby Geisha Pool where we were introduced to an equally foul-mouthed, yet harmless Glaswegian, trying desperately, like so many men from that city, to escape his womenfolk and prescribed existence by driving deep into the country to find places to fish, drink and smoke a joint or two.
By now, we'd become well acquainted with our ghillie, enough to discover he was a ladies' man of some repute (the ever-ringing cellphone is my proof), that he always caught the first salmon every spring (in case you need reminding) and that he'd served in the British Army in Northern Ireland. Strangely enough, our gillie (Irish spelling) in County Mayo also wore a uniform (of an English bobby) before donning his fisherman's vest. It will be interesting to see what awaits us when we eventually get to Wales to try out the Wye and Usk rivers someday.
Just before we left, I practised casting with the 15-foot salmon rod, once again without much success. Neither of us caught anything; not even a nibble. Would we return?
Definitely. The experience had been well worth the effort. In the dying light, one of the locals caught a fish, estimated its weight as seven pounds (metric measurements are meaningless) before returning it to the living water. Hopefully, the river gods were appeased and, hopefully, our breaches of etiquette forgiven.
Fishermen moved off into the gathering gloom, bidding each other farewell and promising to meet by the river at the beginning of the new season in February, no doubt all secretly hoping to deny Ivar his "first salmon of the season."
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