One of the greatest moments of an angler’s day is, having been caught by a sudden storm, to happen upon a little hut beside the river. It will be unlocked and built for no other reason than to shelter anglers such as he or she who has just stumbled damp through the door.
Largely built on the banks of salmon or trout rivers, fishing huts come in an array of shapes and sizes. Some are literally nothing much more than a garden shed. A lean-to with nothing to lean to. Others have fire places and comfortable sofas, windows that look out onto the evening hatch and a space beneath the floor board where a bottle of single malt is always stashed. As long as you leave them in the state in which you found them (including a replenishment of the scotch) then they are almost all available for all.
One exception is the stunning thatched hut that sits beside the River Test at Mottisfont. This was built in 1908 by legendary dry-fly fisherman Frederic Halford and is maintained today by the National Trust. It can be visited, as it lies within the grounds of Mottisfont Abbey, but were you stomp in with dirty waders and rip up the floorboards looking for whiskey, then you would probably floating down the Test….