Unluckily for me, although spring had sprung a few weeks ago the UK seemed to have gone back a month or so and the weather was cold, grey and windy - far from ideal, especially as the carp at Follyfoot Fishery love warner conditions. But hey, sometimes you just can't choose when to go and as this was to be my last opportunity I was determined to give it my best shot.

Zigs are an absolute winner at Follyfoot so I decided to fish three rods at various depths and a fourth on the bottom. And absolutely nothing happened... For hours and hours... Not a liner, an indication, a show, a nothing... It was almost as if all the fish had left the lake a decided to go on holiday!

It wasn't until late evening when I'd switched all the rods onto the bottom that the left hand rod burst into life. A solid PVA bag of pellets and a Sticky Baits Buchu Berry Wafter doing the business. A nice fight and a plump boxy common carp was in the net.

I'd love to say that the action picked up over night but despite regular recasting, baiting and switching things around I just couldn't produce a bite. I'd set my alarm for 6am and woke up to a reasonably bright but windy morning. Luckily I did see several shows over towards the aerator (which was still on) and decided it was as good a pointer as I was going to get...

It wasn't possible to cast due to the pylons that bisect the fishery so I walked the rod down the bank, cast, baited and then walked back to my hut. I did't have to wait long for a bite but unfortunately the fish shot straight into the snaggy looking bush that hangs into the margin and cut me off!

Lesson learned, this time the rod went back on the same spot but I fished it locked up and sat on the rod... And off it went!

Another common of a similar size to the first fish and then a smaller ghosty about an hour later, happy days ;)

As the sun rose and the wind got up the action completely dried up and I decided to cut my losses and call it a day at 1pm. I would've loved a few more fish, especially on the zigs but with the weather against me it was quite a result to have landed 3 fish (I'm not 100% sure if any of the other 6 angers had blanked or not but I'd certainly not seen or heard anything...).

But that's it for UK fishing for now - I don't think there'll be another chance to get out on the bank before the off and the next time you see me, it'll be in Australia with (hopefully!) a completely different species on the line!

It's been snowing recently and with it all melting in a couple of days worth of rain, everything was pretty soggy... Arriving at the venue, I had a quick scout around before settling in swim 2. While I'd been watching the water from the entrance, several fish poked their heads out to open water and the swim also had the added feature of an inflow pipe to the right. At this time of year, oxygen levels are pretty low and any fresh water flowing into the lake is as good a draw as any.

As it turned out, the inflow swim was the only spot to produce a bite in the 24 hours of fishing! A clean common carp of around 12lb ripped off at 4am which saved me from a blank.

Despite moving swims and giving it everything, I just couldn't get another bite... However, I will return! The lake looks fantastic and with a good head of prime condition fish, I've a feeling that once we get into late spring and early summer the fishing will really pick up. Fingers crossed, there'll be another opportunity to head down to Furnace Brook Fishery before the summer is over.

Today was no exception! Apart from smashing through some great puddles and getting more confident on sand the highlight of the day was 'The Clergyman's Track'. I've no idea how Matt found his way back here, I'm guessing he had it plugged into the GPS but after winding through the forest we found ourselves at a fairly innocent looking right turn into the bush...

Which is where the fun and games began. This tiny winding track was excellent: at some points it was just wide enough to get the bike through, then you were winding through trees, then puddles, then getting around fallen trees... All slow work but so much fun.

And the reason for the track name? Well Matt and Luke bumped into a couple of riders some weeks back who showed them the track and they turned out to be ministers!

The other thing I've stated to use is the excellent Relive app on my phone. Set the app recording at the beginning of the ride and it'll follow your every move. Take some snaps along the way or shoot some video and when you're done, click finish and it'll build you a video along with the media you shot along the way and the stats of your ride (speed, elevation etc).

Pretty impressive stuff! It even allows you to export the data to a KLM file so you can load it into a GPS device or Google Maps and you can also explore the root on Google Earth via the website. Well worth checking out.

It was a bit of a slow start - there were 6 riders today which can sometimes take a bit of getting going but we headed off around 9ish. The moment we transferred from the road to dirt I remembered I'd not aired down my tires so after a quick hop off bike to let some air out we disappeared into the forest.

Which is where things started getting interesting... Wyane's bike (anther DRZ400) started playing up, cutting out and being a pain to start. Then Ian disappeared down a hole and hit the dirt and Wayne, who was following behind, grabbed a handful of brake and also ended up eating the dirt, smashing his phone, left barkbuster and rear left indicator in the process...

So we set off again but it quickly became apparent that things really weren't going well: Wayne's bike eventually died and refused to start and it appeared that something wasn't good with Ian's wrist as it had started to swell and was pretty painful.

Eventually Matt towed Wayne back to the bitchumen and we had a bit of a conflab about what to do. In the end the broken DR was left at a random house we found. Ian rode out on the back of Steph's bike and Wayne drove Ian's Yamaha YZ450 back to the car park with the plan being to hire a trailer and come back to pick up the bike!

It was only 11am and we were down to 3 riders - Luke, Matt and myself. To be honest, I was all for writing it off and heading home but luckily Matt and Luke's resolve was better than mine and off we went again...

...and I'm so glad we did! The next 3 or so hours were fantastic fun, the highlight being Luke's shortcut: an completely overgrown track with fallen logs and other obstacles to get over, loads of fun.

The other thing I'd brought along on the ride was my GoPro. It's been sat in the camera bag since returning to Australia so I figured it was time to dust it off and give it a go. Although I shot about 20gb of footage only 5 minutes or so were usable! There's clearly a learning curve to shooting interesting footage on a dirt bike... I leant some lessons though, namely to wear the camera higher on my chest, point it up and only turn it on when something interesting is happening!