............I forgot

I forgot to add what a hive of activity this place is today either. Corinna is preparing dinner after having been proofreading all day. Oll is in the Dining Room printing out the CFZ Christmas cards, and Richard is printing out the latest edition of Animals & Men. Mark is doing the final tweaks to my 1995 book `The Smaller Mystery Carnivores of the Westcountry` (the last of my cryptozoological back catalogue to come out in paperback form), which will be available in about ten days, and I have just finished doing the final revisions to my long awaited book of short stories about fish.

It's called Strength Through Koi, and I find it mildly entertaining. To quote from the introduction:

"Koi carp were certainly lucky for me. As anyone who has ever read my autobiography – Monster Hunter – will know, the beginning of the 21st Century was a particularly bleak time for me. Beset with health problems, I was also facing the threat of imminent bankruptcy. The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] was in the financial doldrums; it was costing an arm and a leg to keep going, and all of our regular sources of funding had dried up!

For years I have augmented my income by working as a `hack` writer, penning throwaway articles for anyone who will pay me. Regularly, I would get the bus into Exeter City Centre, and sneak into W.H.Smiths and peruse the magazines for sale, and make a surreptitious list of any new publications whom I could approach to buy an article from me.

One day in the late winter, I was doing just this when I found a copy of a magazine called Koi Carp. With my tongue firmly in cheek, I telephoned them, and asked whether they would be interested in an article – or even a series of articles – about the fortean aspects of their hobby. Much to my surprise and gratification they accepted, and so I started work on my first article.
I had been so used to working for fly-by-night publications, that I had stopped taking a long-term view of my writing work. I was lucky if a series I wrote lasted three issues, so the fact that I knew next to nothing about the fortean aspect of koi carp keeping didn’t really matter. However, on this occasion, I was hoist by my own petard, as the series carried on for nearly two years! After six or seven issues, I bit the bullet, and started to employ the old journalistic adage that one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Some of the stories that follow are true. Some are mostly true, others have a germ of truth, and even the ones that I made up are based on true events. I think my proudest moment as a journalist came, after the publication of “They Saved Hitler’s Koi”, when Simon Wolstencroft, an old friend of mine, and then editor of a sister-magazine to the one for which I was working, sent me the following email.

1. How did you think you would get away with having this printed?
2. How did you get away with it?

For goodness sake, don’t read these stories looking for any firm insights into the history and culture of koi keeping, but I hope that they may give you some little amusement, because that was the spirit in which they were written.
"

Same old, same old

I'm actually quite pleased how the last week or so has gone. Corinna is back down here with us again, which is always nice. She is in the process of moving in, and events keep on overtaking us, so the long, slow, process is taking what seems to be an intermanable length of time. Oh well, good things come to those who wait.

When I moved up here, I decided that I was going to keep my pet numbers to a minimum. I co-own an elderly dog called Tessie with Richard and Graham, and I have an exceedingly stupid cat called `Helios 7` named after a character invented by the immortal Mr Biffo.

However, I should have known better. The best laid plans of Animals & Men always seem to go pearshaped, and at the moment, in addition to the animals in the CFZ collection (which are exhibits rather than pets, even though both Richard and I have been known to talk babytalk to the amphiumas and caecelians), we now have two degus, a rabbit, two rats (called `Len` and `Sid`) and five cats as well as the dog. Most of these animals belong to my beloved, who is welcome to do what she wants because she can't do wrong in my eyes whatever she does, and the other two are the property of a friend of ours who is staying at the moment.

So, whereas for the past ten years my old, stone house was populated by my elderly parents and their cat, and latterly by my father alone, there are all the above animals, plus the ever growing collection of exotics in the kitchen and conservatory, and tonight there will be seven of us sitting down to dinner.

Weird how things go huh?

CFZ TV is back up...

Months ago I posted a blog entry about our burgeoning CFZtv project, and wrote that:

"we hope that we shall be premiering CFZ TV at the Weird Weekend, with outside broadcasts, interviews and whatever else the team can put together between trips to the off licence. "

I probably shouldn't have made the joke about the off-license, because - due to circumstances beyond our control - John Gledson and I were unable to deliver what we had hoped. There were a number of technical problems, server issues, and personnell problems to sort out, but finally we have a functioning CFZtv website with ten videos and even the beginnings of a Radio CFZ project.

This is only the beginning. For the time being, we have had to cut our coat according to our cloth and are using YouTube as a server. However, we are in negotiations to get a dedicated media server of our own, and things are looking very promising.

As well as hosting out own video shorts, we are working on longer projects (a 40 minute film of our latest expedition to Lake Windermere, with the cringeworthy title `Eel or no Eel` will be up in a few days, but we have other projects in mind. Have YOU got any footage of an unknown animal? A mystery cat? A lake monster? Send it to us, and we will include it in a new section of the CFZtv site.

We hope that eventually this will be a proper web-based TV station, with scheduling, and full-length documentaries - some of which will be available to buy on DVD. However, in the mean time, what we have will have to do.

But as I encoded the whole damn thing from scratch I am quite proud of it all....

WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN – PART TWO

I first became interested in mystery animals at the age of seven when my mother presented me with a library book called Myth or Monster. I was living in Hong Kong with my parents, and was already fascinated by the world around me. My bedroom windowsill was host to a motley collection of jam jars, fish tanks, and shoe boxes overflowing with examples of the local wildlife, but in what turned out to be one of the pivotal epiphanies of my life, I suddenly discovered that some people believed in hairy apemen lurking in the foothills of the Himalayas, and mysterious giants in the depths of Loch Ness. Just as when, a few years later, I discovered that girls were different to boys, and that far from being the “ long haired twits” that my parents had berated, fellows brandishing electric guitars could – and did – make a life affirming racket, my life was never to the same again.

Twenty-three years later, at the age of thirty, I became a professional cryptozoologist, and the subject, which had enthralled me since childhood, became my life’s work.

Without question, the most iconic unknown animal [cryptid] is the Loch Ness Monster. For centuries there have been reports of giant creatures seen occasionally in the largest lake of the British Isles, but it was only in the mid-1930s when monster fever hit the United Kingdom in the wake of the original King Kong movie, and General Wade’s military road made Loch Ness accessible to the general public for the first time, that monster sightings began to proliferate. It would be a great mistake to see the events at Loch Ness in isolation. There are several other lakes in Scotland, quite a few in Ireland, and others dotted across Scandinavia, Northern Europe, Northern Russia, Canada, and parts of the U.S. where “monsters” have been reported. Generations of theorists have speculated that these creatures are surviving prehistoric marine reptiles, but this hypothesis just does not make sense.

• These animals would have been air breathers. There are just not enough sightings to support a viable population of air breathing animals.
• There simply is not enough biomass in many of these lakes, including Loch Ness, to support a viable population of large creatures.
• It is highly probable that animals such as Plesiosaurs would have given birth on land. There have been land sightings, but again not enough.
• The vast majority of these lakes would have been frozen solid during the last Ice Age.
• There is no evidence whatsoever that any of the giant reptiles, or indeed any non-avian dinosaurs survived the KT extinction event of 65 million years ago.
  

On top of this, many investigations, most recently by the BBC, who three or four years ago spent several million pounds on a documentary proving that because no sonar patterns of air filled lungs were picked up during a sweep of the loch that no air breathing animals of great size were living in the lake. This is all well and good, but it is grossly unscientific to say that because no animals of one type can be living in a specific location, that no large creatures of any type can be living there.

My colleagues and I at the Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] – the world’s largest mystery animal research organisation, have believed for many years that if there are indeed giant creatures in these northern lakes, they would have to be enormous fish, probably eels. In 2003, we were given a piece of video footage which is now on our website. It has been interpreted as a giant eel – twenty foot long – thrashing around, probably in its death throes from a chronic infestation of ichthyophthirius, a parasitic disease found on freshwater fish. Webcam pictures of freshwater fish at the time show that this disease – or one closely related to it – had reached epidemic proportions on the salmon and trout population at that time. Since then we have been enthusiastically espousing the giant eel theory to explain lake monster sightings across the Northern Hemisphere.

The trouble is with eels, is that they just simply don’t grow to that sort of size – not officially at least. The angling literature for the past century and a half has produced occasional reports of massive specimens, but according to accepted wisdom at least, the European eel (A. anguilla) reaches a maximum size of three foot (females) and two foot (males). The current record for this species – and even this is accepted by most experts as a lusus naturae – is just over four feet. Whenever we have approached either icthyologists and members of the angling community we have been told that our hypthesis just cannot be.

Something that has always intrigued me is that – with one large, and glaring exception – every body of water is inhabited by a monster – at least according to those who live, and fish there. Every great lake has its version of “Nessie” and every village pond is the haunt of “the biggest perch you ever saw; it bit young Billie’s leg while he was paddling last year, honest sir”.
The one exception is the English Lake District. OK, Cliff Twemlow wrote a massively entertaining, but zoologically nonsensical novel about a giant pike in Lake Windermere a few years back, and renowned children’s author Arthur Ransome alluded to giant pike in the waters off Wildcat Island, but there is no historical tradition of lake monsters from the largest extant lakes in England. Not until now that is.

On 23rd July 2006, between 12 and 1 o’clock, Steve Burnip, a holidaymaker from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire was standing with his wife and some friends on Watbarrow Point, a small rocky promontory just below Wray Castle on the western shore of the lake. It was a fine July afternoon and one of the warmest on record. They saw a disturbance in the water that looked like a boat wake. It was caused by an animal which appeared to be at least twenty feet long and which was moving faster than a rowing boat. They saw what appeared to be a head and two portions of a long grey body, and although they watched the animal for approximately a minute, no visible eyes or facial features could be seen. Steve had a camera in his pocket – a powerful digital instrument with 8 mega-pixel capacity, but by the time he thought of using it, the creature was too far away. He did take a photograph, which we have seen. It appears to show several slate grey humps in the water, approximately fifty yards away, but for personal reasons Steve – at the moment at least – is loathe to release the picture to the press.

A week or so later, he told the story to the editor of a local newspaper – a personal friend – and on Friday, 18th August we were contacted by a reporter from the Westmorland Gazette who had googled the subject of giant fish in the UK and found that after our encounter with a giant cat fish in Lancashire during 2002, that we were generally considered to be the UK’s leading experts on the subject. We were immediately interested and as a result of our conversations, the paper ran a follow-up story appealing for further witnesses.

Over the next month we received six further eyewitness accounts. Interestingly, one was from the late 1950s, and another from the early 1980s. The other contemporary sightings followed in much the same pattern as Burnip’s, but – for me at least – the most exciting account came from Kevin Boyd, an amateur diver who is extremely conversant with the wildlife of the area, and has seen eels of over six feet in length on a number of occasions, both in Windermere, and in the neighbouring lake of Coniston Water.

On 11th October, a five-person team from the Centre of Fortean Zoology travelled to the Lake District for a three-day fact finding mission. The team consisted of:

· Jonathan Downes. Team leader, Director of the CFZ, author, cryptozoologist, and journalist specialising in freshwater creatures.
· Richard Freeman. Zoological Director of the CFZ, expert in Lake Monster and Dragon stories worldwide, author and cryptozoologist.
· Mark North. Assistant Director of the CFZ, author and folklorist.
· Lisa Dowley. Amateur Archaeologist and CFZ investigator, and driver of one of the mission’s two cars.
· Corinna James. Administrator, writer, Jon’s fiancee, and driver of the other CFZ car on her first cryptozoological investigation.

We were also accompanied by Jon Ronson; journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and radio presenter. He has been a mate of the CFZ’s for a decade and has long wanted to accompany us in the field. With Jon were Laura, a producer from Radio 4, and Dominic, a cameraman from The Guardian.

Organising even the most simple CFZ excursion seems to take an inordinate length of time, and this – featuring as it did eight different people scattered all over the country was logistically somewhat more difficult than normal. Things were complicated by the fact that I was seriously ill throughout September, and although I had recovered enough to travel to the Festival of Fishkeeping in sunny Hayling Island the previous weekend, together with my long suffering and very beloved Corinna, I then managed to contract a heavy cold, and mild bronchitis, and spent much of the two days between our return to CFZ HQ from Hayling Island, and our departure for the Lake District.

I relied on Corinna and Mark to load up her little turquoise car with the equipment and luggage necessary, and languished in bed coughing and spluttering, and quaffing Lemsip and honey until the very last moment, only emerging, sounding - and probably looking - like a bad tempered and somewhat elderly walrus, a few minutes before we left. There is a lovely line in Moby Dick about “setting sail into the dark Atlantic” and I am always reminded of this when, after the hour or so it takes for us to leave my native North Devon, when we finally enter the busy sea-lanes of the M5.

I felt particularly sorry for Corinna. Not only was I in a foul mood, coughing and spluttering like a grampus, but our journey was interrupted every few minutes with incessant mobile phone calls from newspapers, radio stations, and television companies. Having learnt from previous expeditions, how once the newspapers get hold of the story they stick to it like terriers to a badger (with me being the badger), I had carefully refrained from publicising this – our first trip to the Lake District. I had always intended that if we decided at the end of this exploratory investigation that there was, indeed, a bona fide mystery worth solving, this would only be the beginning. My great hero is, was, and probably always will be, Gerald Durrell, and as the CFZ progressed over the years, I have tried to base its modus operandi upon that bequeathed by Durrell to the wildlife preservation organisation which now bears his name. I have no truck with self-styled monster hunters who spend a few days of their summer vacation travelling to exotic (or not so exotic) locales, carry out a half-arsed investigation, and then push off back home stating confidently that as they have not seen the creature in question that it cannot exist, only to do exactly the same thing with another cryptid the following year. The CFZ has a commitment to long-term investigations; we have been to Sumatra twice, and are going back again soon, are intending to revisit Mongolia in either 2007 or 2008, and right from the beginning I intended that should deem the investigation to be valid, the Lake District project will last for at least 12 months. So, I felt no need to involve the media at such an early stage, but like moths to a flame (with me being the flame), they swooped in and did their best to take over the entire expedition.

I am always in a difficult position here. I need the media far more than they need me, but I am an awkward son of a bitch, and nothing irritates me more than having the activities of the CFZ curtailed by media intrusion. At Martin Mere we had wasted nearly an entire day because someone from Sky News wanted to film us from every conceivable angle, and then spent several hours asking us intrusive and impertinent questions. However, I tried to maintain cordial relations with the gentlemen of the press, and so during our journey I did several interviews, and agreed to meet TV crews for a number of live broadcasts.

By the time we reached Birmingham, the parallels with Herman Melville’s novel were getting more and more evident. The rain beat down upon the windscreen of our tiny car and it did seem like we were a tiny wooden ship buffeted by the elements, as we headed into the unknown. OK, the crew of the Pequod sang sea shanties to lift their spirits while we listened to a compendium of Hannah Barbara theme songs followed by selections by T.Rex and Rammstein, but the parallels seemed good enough to us at the time. When Corinna couldn’t handle driving any further, we stopped for copious amounts of coffee and buns before continuing our journey towards the frozen north.

In the car, Corinna, Mark and I were feeling in quite a bouyant mood, and we were pleased to hear from Richard that he and Lisa had already arrived at Windermere and were busily getting their bearings, and finding out the locations of local businesses with whom we would have to liaise during our sojourn in the Lakelands. These included marine chandlers, a fishmongers, and an Internet café; and I mused to myself how not only Melville, but Arthur Ransome himself, would have been quite au fait with the first two, but would not have had even the slightest inkling of the pivotal importance of a cyber café to a cryptoinvestigative anabasis during the early years of the 21st Century.

The journey took an interminable length of time, and dusk was falling as we drove along the A591 from Kendal towards Windermere itself.

I had only been to the Lake District twice before in my life. Once as a child in 1967 (the year of Ransome’s death) and once as a slightly mad and very stoned adult during my misspent years working in the music business. At the time I was part of the touring party for Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and we played an eminently forgettable concert in Kendal Leisure Centre before making our way back down south for the next gig. However, immediately upon entering Windermere I felt at home. Since I was a small child I have been a devotee of Arthur Ransome’s immortal Swallows and Amazons books and have read widely on the subject. For once, visiting somewhere that I have explored in my head a hundred times was not a disappointment. I was to find over the next three days that the genius locii of Ransome’s self-reverential Lake District transferred itself perfectly to the real Lake District of the 21st Century. Throughout the three days we spent there I found myself becoming ridiculously over-emotional when I saw yet another place that was exactly how I had imagined it to be.
What Ransome had not prepared me for, however, was the massively eccentric proprietor of our B & B. He was like a cross between Adrian Edmondson and Basil Fawlty, and once one began to appreciate his wry and somewhat peculiar sense of humour, one became almost fond of him. It has got to be said that he should be commended for having put up with the disruption that the arrival of eight peculiar and self-opinionated investigators and media types caused, without so much as batting an eyelid. He showed us to our rooms, archly warning us not to spill anything on the carpets, smoke, or touch any of the made up beds that we weren’t actually going to sleep in, before grinning manically and disappearing. We unpacked, showered and went downstairs, to find that not only were Richard and Lisa esconsed in the reception lounge, but that Jon Ronson had arrived and was stalking around like a slightly predatory water bird, brandishing a microphone under people’s noses and asking questions about our plans for the next three days. His producer was not to arrive until the following day, and Jon was doing a very creditable performance at trying to record material for a fly-on-the-wall radio documentary about the investigation. I have always been rather fond of Jon and – to his credit - he never let his role as humerous journalist get in the way of the main matter at hand.

We spent forty minutes or so discussing what was to happen next. Richard and Lisa had already interviewed one of the eye-witnesses in Manchester on the previous evening, and had been mightily impressed with his testimony. This interview had been with a man who had seen something strange in the lake as far as back as 1959 and established that this lakeland phenomenon, which was nowhere near as famous as the one at Loch Ness, at least had an impressive provenance.

At half-past eight there was a knock on the door, and a tall, weather-beaten man joined us. It was Kevin Boyd; the diver who had seen extra large eels in both Windermere and Coniston Water on several occasions over the past few years. If one needs one word to sum him up it is ‘capable’. He is the sort of man who can turn his hand at most things, and we liked him immediately. He was strong, confident, and intelligent, and on hearing his testimony we were convinced – as if any convincing was needed – that there was no doubt that some individuals within the eel population in both of these great lakes do indeed reach sizes far in excess of what they should do. Whilst we were talking to Kevin, the door opened again, and Dominic – a mild-mannered, friendly and highly professional photographer - walked in. He had been sent by The Guardian to cover the events of the next three days, and although none of us (including, I suspect, Jon Ronson) were expecting him, he turned out to be one of the nicest blokes we have met in a long time.

One of the things that I like about these expeditions is that we make friends very quickly and very easily, and after an evening spent in the pub it was like we all had known each other for a heck of a long time. I have known Richard and Mark for well over a decade, Jon Ronson intermittently since 1997, and the two girls for only a couple of years, but we soon found that we had forged into an impressive, and quite formidable, investigative unit. We retired to bed soon after closing time, whereupon I received a telephone call from Radio 5 Live. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be doing an interview for them about the expedition. The interview had been scheduled for quarter past midnight, but a very apologetic producer telephoned to tell me that “all hell had broken loose” in the BBC offices because a light aircraft had flown into a tower block in New York.

Of course, the news gathering machine which had built up since the tragic events of 11th September 2001, had kicked into action, and although it appeared that it was merely a tragic accident in which only two people were killed, the spectre of another major terrorist attack loomed over all concerned, and it was not at all surprising that I had to wait until one in the morning until I had my interview.

By the time I did, I was half-asleep, but I acquitted myself well, even managing some mildly witty jokes upon being told that one of the national newspapers had dubbed the beast of Windermere as “Windy”. My suitably veiled ribald comments seemed to amuse the presenters who asked me to come back in a few week’s time and tell them what – if anything – we had discovered.

I slept like a log. This is unusual for me, as when I am alone in my bed at night I quite often do not enter the arms of Morpheus before dawn. However, when sleeping next to the woman I adore, I sleep like a baby, without recourse to the chemical cosh, and I was really quite surprised at eight o’clock the next morning I realised it was time to get up.

I have always thought that the English breakfast was probably the main contributing factor to us having gained the biggest empire the world has ever known. It is hard to imagine Cecil Rhodes, Clive of India, the Duke of Wellington, or Major Richard Sharpe, subsisting on a handful of nuts, a latte, and a cheese croissant, and so it was particularly gratifying to find that mine host had laid on one of the most impressive full English breakfasts that I have sampled in many a year.

After breakfast I gave one of my daily expedition briefings, which are familiar to anybody who has ever been on a CFZ expedition. However, Richard was the only person who had been into the field with me before, and I hope that the newcomers were not too put off by what I had to say. I come from a military family, and basically the only way I know to run even the slightest of expeditions is as some sort of analog to a military operation. Lisa and Corinna were dispatched to find somewhere that we could hire a boat on Coniston Water, and Mark to find the library. The girls soon found somewhere where we could hire a boat at a ridiculously low cost, and as Mark scuttled off to find out whether the library had a reference section which he could use to research any incidents of lake monsters in lakeland folklore and the historical record, the rest of us hurriedly reshuffled our plans for the next three days.

We had originally intended to spend the Thursday interviewing witnesses, and to spend the Friday out on a boat in Lake Windermere, where – accompanied by Kevin the diver – we would lay bait sacks primed with a chemical attractant which is allegedly irresistable to predatory fish. However, on the previous evening two events had conspired to make this schedule unworkable.
Firstly, Kevin told us that it was impossible to dive on Lake Windermere without a permit – and even then, only in strictly proscribed areas. However, he tempered this blow by telling us that although he had seen one extremely large eel the previous summer on Windermere which – allowing for the distortion caused by viewing through glass and water – was at least eight feet in length, he had seen eels of six foot plus in a particular location on Coniston Water on a number of occasions. He told us that the best time to dive for them was just after dusk, when, several times, he had witnessed a mass of eels of varying sizes carpeting the floor of the lake about forty foot down. Amongst them had occasionally been fish in excess of six foot in length.

The second curve-ball was that Jon Ronson had pressing business in London on the Friday evening, and would, therefore, have to return on an afternoon train. We teased him that as a media luvee, he couldn’t bear to be away from the exclusive restaurants and fleshpots of Islington for more than 48 hours, but we knew that he had a young family that he dotes on, and was loathe to be away from them at weekends.

Therefore, we planned to do the exercise with the boat and the diving in the late afternoon of the Thursday.

However, we still had three appointments to deal with before then, so as time was of the essence, we summoned Mark back from the library and left our digs just before 10 o’clock. Mark had had a mildly disappointing time. The area of the library that he wanted to peruse was out of bounds that morning because of a meeting, so he came back empty handed and feeling mildly grumpy. However, he had a present for me; the first of several books that I was to pick up that week on the subject of Arthur Ransome and the real life background to his novels.
Our first appointment was at 10.30 that morning. We were to liaise with a TV crew and a bevy of newspaper reporters at Watbarrow Point – the sight of Steve Burnip’s sighting back in July which had kickstarted the whole expedition. On the map, it looked quite easy to get to, but as always seems to be the case, the reality was far less inviting. We drove in convoy; us first, Lisa and Richard following in her somewhat sinister looking 4 x 4, and Jon and Dominic keeping up the rear. We made our way to Ambleside at the head of the lake, and although I knew that it had been demolished over half a century ago, I looked out for the hexagonal summerhouse which had provided an eminently satisfactory ‘North Pole’ for the Swallows and Amazons in Winter Holiday (the fourth book in the series).

Once we had left Ambleside behind us, things started to go wrong. We had agreed with the TV company to liaise at Watbarrow Point having been assured by the adenoidal girl on the ‘phone that it was easy to get to and that there was a large car park.

It wasn’t.

And there wasn’t.

More by luck than judgement, we found ourselves in the pouring rain parked in a small car park just beneath Wray Castle. The air was sundered by the incessant baying of large dogs, and I waxed lyrical upon the subject of hound trails – the traditional lakeland pastime described so evocatively by Ransome in Swallowdale – the second of the lakeland books. However, it was nothing of the sort; it appeared that the local police were training guard dogs there that day. Richard and I filmed each other doing brief introductions for the expedition as we waited for the TV company to arrive. However, although they were meant to be there at 10.30 we received a number of prevaricating ‘phone calls and they finally turned up at quarter past eleven, as did a seedy looking man in a grubby raincoat who introduced himself as a reporter from some paper I have never heard of. What I should have done at this point, was to tell them that they had left it too late, but being a trusting sort of cove I accepted their assurances that not only was Watbarrow Point a few minutes walk away, but that they would only want to film us for a maximum of ten minutes, giving us plenty of time to return to Bowness for our next appointment at mid-day.

Malcolm McLaren once said that one should never trust a hippy. This hippy now says that one should never trust TV journalists – at least as far as scheduling is concerned. It took us the best part of a quarter of an hour to get down to Watbarrow Point, by which time Richard and Lisa were only able to stay there before having to return to the digs for their next appointment. However, Mark, Corinna and I, together with Jon Ronson and Dominic stayed at the Point to play the media game and to grok Watbarrow Point in its fullness.

Throughout the three days, I felt the ghost of Arthur Ransome breathing down my neck. Everywhere we went we could see his fingerprints across the landscape, and it came as no surprise to find that Watbarrow Point was one of the locations that Ransomeologists have postulated as being the location of ‘Darien’, the place where the first book in the series begins.
As my researches continued, I found that although Ransome claimed that the four Walker children in his books – the eponymous ‘Swallows’ – were merely figments of his imagination, it seems that this is not quite the case. As a young man Ransome had been in love with Dora Collingwood, the daughter of the author of Thorstein of the Mere, a favourite book from his childhood.

Although Dora had gently rebuffed his advances, Ransome remained a friend of the family, and when she married Dr. Ernest Altoynan, a half-Armenian, half-Scottish/Ulster physician who spent most of his working life in Syria, Ransome not only remained friends with the couple, but, when in 1928 the family returned to their native Lake District on holiday, Ransome befriended their four children, and incorporated them into the novel he was writing.

For the purposes of the narrative, the eldest daughter, Taqui, underwent literary gender reallocation and became ‘Captain John’, but the other three; Susan, Titty, and Roger, were transferred relatively intact to the book and its sequels. Titty was one of Ransome’s most eloquent creations; a sensitive, spiritual, and literary, child; she was perhaps the nearest to her real life counterpart. For the record, her real name was Mavis, but her nickname came from a much loved Victorian children’s book called The Tale of Tattymouse and Tittymouse, and generations of adolescent smutty jokes, and snide remarks by alternative comedians during the 1980s were dreadfully misplaced. The fictional Titty had named the promontory upon which the four children had sat looking longingly at the great lake after a poem by Keats which describes the emotions felt by the explorer and genicidal murderer Cortez upon first seeing the Pacific Ocean. I found myself singing Neil Young’s Cortez the Killer (which, told the same story from a totally different perspective) as I strode uncertainly towards a landscape so familiar to me from Ransome’s prose, and charming pen and ink illustration.

It was an idyllic scene. The rocky promontory towered out over a tiny bay in which the water was so crystal clear that you could see the tiny fish swimming happily in the waters below. The trees of the ancient wood towered over us as I sat on a rock and answered a series of questions which I had answered so many times before. How had I become involved in cryptozoology? Did I really believe there was a monster in the lake? Did I believe in Bigfoot? Were we really going to catch a twenty foot eel?

About half way through, as I was posing in ever more unrealistic contortions for the TV and newspaper cameras, we were joined by another pair of reporters – this time from the Westmorland Gazette; the illustrious organ without whom we would not have been there in the first place.

Both the reporter and the photographer from the Westmorland Gazette were of a significantly higher calibre than the others we had met. Their questions were intelligent, insightful, and they seemed to have a genuine interest in who we were, and what we trying to do. As the questions and photo sessions progressed, the rain came down harder and at one point Corinna lent me a very fetching lilac brolly which made me feel for all the world like one of the Teletubbies as I sat beneath it answering fatuous questions from the gentlemen of the press. By this time we were running seriously late and so I did my best to truncate the session so we could have at least some chance of meeting our 12 o’clock witness. Alas, this was not to be. The first, and least attractive, of the newspaper people had insisted that we bring our fishing net and traps down to the lakeside edge. Although knowing full well that we were on a tight schedule, the TV grabbed these nets and high-tailed it to the other side of the promontory to do arty cutaway shots of nets swooshing through water, and this held us up even further.

By this stage I was getting cross, and as my mobility is somewhat more impaired than that of any other of the party, I started to trudge my weary way up the hill towards the Wray Castle car park, leaning heavily on my walking stick. It took nearly a quarter of an hour for us to retrieve our equipment and make our way back to the car. Richard, and Lisa, had left forty five minutes previously, and – or so we had been informed by a text message – were now comfortably esconsed in a friendly hostelry in Windermere with the witness. Jon Ronson and Dominic followed us as we drove through the twisting lanes towards Ambleside and then Windermere. By the time we got to the pub to meet up with Richard, Lisa and our lunchtime witnesses – Mr and Mrs Gaskell who had seen the creature whilst boating on Windermere during July – we were not in the best of tempers, and nearly an hour late. However, Mr and Mrs Gaskell were such obviously nice people, and their testimony so compelling, that any feelings of grumpiness soon went out the window.

Also at the pub were Kevin Boyd – our friend from the previous night - and his fourteen-year old daughter Kelsey, who has ambitions to become a marine biologist, and who had managed to get the day off school on the grounds that hanging out with the CFZ is an educational experience. They had been busy during the morning, and had acquired some bait, rope and flotation buoys. Just a note about bait: it is now illegal to use live or dead freshwater fish as bait on Windermere or Coniston Water. Kevin and Kelsey had therefore got herrings and squid, a combination that we hoped, when liberally doused in Predator Plus, would prove an irresistable lure to any large eels that happened to be in the lake.

Although Richard and Lisa had already carried out the main interview with Eric Gaskell and his wife, they were happy to talk about their experience further, and when, at about half past one, the delightful, and ever so slightly scatty, Laura – producer for Jon Ronson’s BBC Radio 4 programme – turned up, the Gaskells went through their story for a third time. They told me that they went boating very regular on Windermere and that not only could we come out with them next year on our return, but they would put the word around to other friends of theirs in the boating fraternity and that it is quite likely that we will have the run of the lake in any of several vessels.

On the July afternoon in question, Mr. Gaskell told me that the weather was dry and fine, with little breeze and the surface water was warm and calm. They have, on many occasions, seen fish jumping and surfacing in the lake, but on this particular day they were travelling about 4 knots near the yellow 6m/h marker at the entrance to the Ambleside basin, at the north end of the lake, when they both saw a disturbance in the water, about 20 yards astern. Mr Gaskell told me that they had seen something very large surfacing and diving again, which looked like a seal or dolphin without the fin, leaving a large wake and ripples. They did not see it again that day, or anything similar since.

I had to leave the rest of the party, and disappear off to a quiet side room with Jon and Laura. They needed to interview me in some depth for their Radio 4 show, and because of the noise from an air conditioning vent that kept switching itself on and off quite randomly the process took much longer than it should have done. By the time it had finished it was time for us to go off in convoy to Coniston Water to begin preparations for the evening’s dive.

This is where things got very complicated. We left Richard, Corinna, and Mark, back in Windermere. They had to fulfil a four o’clock interview with Michael Brook – a witness who had seen a strange animal swimming across the lake in the early 1980s. While they did this, a three-car convoy; me, Kevin and Kelsey in the lead, Lisa in the middle and the BBC/Guardian posse bringing up the rear made our way slowly towards the western shore of Coniston Water.

Michael Brook told Richard, Mark, and Corinna, that he had been standing on the western shore of Lake Windermere, not far from Stewardson Nab when he had seen a strange shape moving in a straight line across the water from the other side of the lake in the vicinity Hammer Hole. He estimated the height to be about three foot by comparing it with a buoy. He had tried to climb higher up the hill to get a better view but by the time he had done this the shape had disappeared. After the interview with Michael Brook, Richard, Mark, and Corinna, took the car ferry across Lake Windermere and made their way around the narrow, twisting, undulating roads to Coniston Water to rendezvous with the other party.

Meanwhile the rest of us were having a quite unexpected adventure. The juvenile protagonists of the Swallows and Amazons books always referred to local people, and indeed all grown-ups as ‘natives’. As we hurtled along the narrow country lanes, although Kevin was rapidly becoming both a friend and a valued member of the team, I was still thinking of him in terms of being a ‘native guide’. I wonder whether any of the great journeys of exploration across the Dark Continent were ever hampered when the native guide took a wrong journey. Ours certainly was. By his own admission, Kevin took a wrong turning just outside Hawkshead and we ended up driving for nearly an hour across some picturesque, bleak, and completely irrelevant Cumbrian countryside. As things turned out, it didn’t really matter, and I think that the experience was actually a positive one as it gave me and Kevin a chance to really bond. I was very impressed at Kevin’s knowledge of the local wildlife, and we talked for hours about pine martens, sparrowhawks and large pike. At one point, we hurtled over the brow of a small hill to find ourselves in the middle of a flock of at least sixty pheasants of varying sizes which ambled around the road in the slightly retarted way that pheasants are prone to do.

Eventually we found ourselves approaching Coniston town and driving down the west side of the lake in a southerly direction. As we pulled in to Lower Peel Near, I breathed a sigh of relief. We unpacked our equipment, and, leaving Lisa, Dominic and Kelsey to set up camp, Kevin, Jon, Laura and I drove as fast as we could to the opposite side of the lake.

Donald Campbell died on Coniston Water in January 1967 when his boat Bluebird K7 flipped and disintegrated at a speed in excess of 300 mph while attempting to break his own water speed record. To commemorate this, the Bluebird Café was built just outside Coniston on the shore of the lake. It was here – next to the Coniston Boating Centre – that we had arranged to have our next rendezvous. I had been telephoned some days before by a genial chap called David from BBC Manchester. Having completely forgotten about him, I was slightly perturbed to receive a ‘phone call from him whilst we were at Watbarrow Point that morning. I was in the middle of answering a particularly fatuous question posed to me by one or the other of the local newspapers (not the Westmorland Gazette, as they were genuinely nice people), when he ‘phoned. Without really thinking about what I was saying, I arranged to meet them at 4 o’clock at the Bluebird Café. A few seconds later, he ‘phoned back. As we were going out on a boat that afternoon, would it be possible for him to accompany us? Yes, I replied, and put the ‘phone down. A few seconds later he ‘phoned back. What was our policy on Health and Safety? Had we completed a risk assessment form? Could I give him the ‘phone number of his Health and Safety Officer so I could contact him? I lost my temper. “It’s a bloody tourist power boat!” I snapped. “And anyway, Health and Safety is for wusses”.

As a result, I was not sure whether the BBC would have taken enormous umbrage or not, or even whether they would turn up. By this time I had had more than enough from our friends in the media, and decided that I really didn’t give a damn what the BBC decided to do.
However, when we pulled in to the large car park – just over an hour late – we were greated by a huge BBC Outside Broadcast truck, and a little guy called David. Despite the fact that by this point in the expedition I was heartily sick of the media, David was such a nice bloke that I immediately warmed to him.

Laura went and paid for the boat, and we were given strict instructions by the bloke in charge that we had to be back by six. At this point, this seemed an eminently reasonable request. However, I hadn’t realised – and neither had anyone else – that not only was our destination three quarters of the way down the lake, but that the boat itself was only capable of toddling along at about 1 mile an hour. The original plan had been to use Predator Plus and bait sacks from the boat, and to keep a watch on the waters below using our sonar fishfinder. There had been yet another cock-up, when we found that an integral part of the fishfinder had been left behind in Exeter, and to be quite honest with less than an hour to play with, the excursion across Coniston Water in the boat was only really to provide window dressing for the BBC Radio and TV crews.

We all clambered aboard and set sail in a southerly direction. During the journey I did a long and eloquent piece to camera for the benefit of David and the BBC North crew back on shore, and then a further interview for Jon and Laura. It soon became very evident that our schedule would have to go our of the window. It took over half an hour before Kevin piloted our little craft into the bay where Lisa, Kelsey and Dominic were waiting for us. I was a little worried to see that Corinna and the two lads had not rejoined the main party, but we were in such a mobile ‘phone blackspot that it was impossible for us to contact them.

As we slowly sailed in, we passed a tiny island on the left hand side and I realised to my great pleasure, that it was Peel Island; the original prototype for Arthur Ransome’s Wildcat Island. There was the entrance to the hidden harbour. There was the look out crew. And there, with a sickening thump as we hit it, was Pike Rock upon which the Swallows had been shipwrecked in Swallowdale. Luckily, we were travelling too slowly to do any damage, but as we manouvred gingerly away from the rock we almost immediately ran aground. The whole excursion was rapidly taking on a very Swallows and Amazonesque air. Luckily, Dominic, clad in wet suit, was already in the water and he helped us get afloat again and pushed us as near to shore as possible, whereupon Kevin rolled up his trouser legs and jumped overboard to help him.
This was not quite as bizarrely macho an exercise as it might seem. The water was only about eighteen inches deep! With a wonderful display of gallantry, Kevin gave Laura a piggyback ride to shore, and then – to my great delight – returned to do the same for Jon Ronson. I found the sight of our guest celebrity being carried to shore by our diver irresistably funny, and I am glad to say that this display of intrepitude on Jon’s behalf has been captured for immortality on film.

Because time was running out, David and I had no real option but to turn round and start heading up the lake again towards the Bluebird Café. We ran aground twice and had to be manouvred off the shoals by Dominic and Kevin and when, by luck rather than by judgement, we hit Pike Rock again with a sickening thud I stood up in the stern, put my arms out in the manner of the two people in the front of the Titanic in the iconic film poster and started to sing For Those in Peril on the Sea. It took ten minutes to get into open water again, whereupon we had another problem. The engine wouldn’t start.

It took five minutes to coax the engine into life and we headed – somewhat unsteadily – north again. We were right in the middle of the lake, in quite deep water, when the engine conked out again. It was probably our imagination, but we could hear some unsettling gurgling sounds, and both David and I were convinced that we were just about to sink. We were not only supposed to be back by six o’clock to meet the boatman, but were also scheduled to make a live TV broadcast at 6.30 pm and as we coaxed the engine back to life again and limped back towards Coniston, all the while convinced that we were facing a watery grave, it became more and more obvious that we were just not going to make it back in time.

David had a mobile ‘phone which somehow managed to work. I suspect it was some expensive satellite ‘phone owned by the BBC but I cannot be sure. Although there was no sign of us getting lower in the water, we were both quite scared, and I borrowed his telephone to ‘phone Corinna. I was in somewhat of a quandry at this point. On the one hand I didn’t want to worry her, but on the other hand both David and I were fairly convinced that we might have to swim for it, and I was only too aware that the currents in the middle of Coniston Water and notorious for being very treacherous indeed. I was also too aware that it was very easy to get lost in the winding lanes between Windermere and Coniston and setting aside my worries about our nautical predicament, I was getting quite concerned that Corinna, Mark and Richard had got lost, and would be wandering around unchartered lanes in the dark. We had a brief conversation, and I felt comforted by the fact that even if our little vessel was going to sink, that not only had I had the chance to tell Corinna that I love her before I went down to Davy Jones’ locker, but that I had done so in a way that had not overly alarmed her.

Eventually, we could see the little white jetty which stuck out into the lake from the Bluebird Café. As we pulled in, I could see the unmistakeable frame of the boatman running towards us. I was convinced that as we were by this time forty five minutes late, that he was going to be furious, and that at the very least I was going to have to spend out a fair amount of my precious expedition fund in placating him. As he ran I could see him shaking. I assumed that he was shaking from anger. As he came closer, I shouted “I am so sorry” but still he was shaking. He must be beside himself with anger, I thought. But he wasn’t, he was laughing. Quite what he found so amusing I am not sure, but as we tied up, and shook hands, I could see that my fears had all been groundless.

That was one problem out of the way, but we were too late for the live broadcast. Naomi, the anchorwoman, was just extemporising something to camera about how the intrepid expedition was still out on the lake as David and I shamefacedly shambled past in search of a cup of tea. I have never been in the position of finding myself in potentially serious danger when accompanied only by someone whom I had only known for less than an hour, but, unsurprisingly, David and I bonded to quite a considerable extent. We promised to keep in touch, and David said that he would do whatever was in his power to help us when we return to Cumbria next year.

David drove me back round to the main party, said his goodbyes and left. By this time Corinna, Mark and Richard had rejoined, and we made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the shore as we waited for night to fall.

Before it got dark, Kevin had placed a number of baited sacks out in the bay. Each sack contained cut up fish and squid, Predator Plus and some rocks. Richard and I had carried out a similar exercise at Loch Ness the previous November, but were surprised at how difficult the process on Coniston was going to be. The currents were very strong under water, and the bait sacks drifted considerably. However, eventually the process was complete, and Kevin came back to shore. Just after dark, Lisa drove him back to the Bluebird Café on the other side of the lake to retrieve his car and upon their return he went back in the water, this time armed with an underwater camera, to see what he could find.

Richard and I had been planning this episode for many years. OK, we didn’t know it was going to take place in the Lake Distict but since the late 1990s we have been putting plans in place to do a dive for giant eels as and where it became appropriate. Despite claims made on our behalf in the media, we never had any great hopes of catching, or even seeing, an outside eel on this occasion. The main point of this three day expedition was to meet the eyewitnesses, suss out the lie of the land, and – as far as the diving was concerned – carry out something of a dress rehearsal. No matter how many times you plan something back in the office, the reality is always going to be significantly different. It soon became clear that there were a number of things which we had never even considered.

Firstly, we had always planned to dive during daylight or at dusk. Kevin explained that the eels come out to feed just after dark, and this was a contingency that we just had not planned for. The first thing that we realised was that on any future dives we would have to put lights on the buoys, and preferably on the bait sacks themselves. This will be easy to arrange using proprietry light sticks – tubes of chemicals which, when broken, emit quite a strong light for several hours – but this had just not occurred to us. Kevin was finding great difficulty in locating either the buoys or the bait sacks in pitch darkness, and I regret to say that this part of the experiment was a failure.

Another problem was the time of year. Whilst all of us were aware that by early October eels usually either disappear to sea or go to the deepest part of the lakes to stay for the winter, we had hoped that because it had been one of the hottest summers on record and because the water of the lake was allegedly eight degrees warmer than usual the eels would still be there. Sadly, this was not the case, and the anguilliform population of Coniston Water had followed the normal biological imperative and were nowhere to be seen. The water was also higher than normal – Kevin estimated by eighteen to twenty-four inches, and as Kelsey pointed out (to Richard’s and my embarrassment because as zoologists it should have been us who had thought of it not a fourteen-year old girl) that this would have affected the distribution patterns of the aquatic invertebrates on which the eels feed. Sadly it would appear that we were looking in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kevin did manage to get some remarkable pictures of the lake floor, of pike and of perch, and all in all, although we didn’t either catch or photograph any eels, we felt that our first exploratory dives had been a qualified success.

The night was very quiet, and very still. Sitting and standing on the shore where the only illumination were tiny pinpricks of light from torches, and the ethereal ghostly glow from Kevin’s underwater light, which would intermittently illuminate the water before us with a yellow green haze, was an enthralling, exciting, and oddly humbling experience. There are some people in the cryptozoological community who are scathing about investigations carried out in the United Kingdom. They seem to believe that true adventures can only be found in the jungles or deserts of the tropics. On this Thursday afternoon and evening I think that we have proved them wrong. David and I had come close to being shipwrecked, and here was Kevin risking life and limb forty feet below the surface of the water in pitch blackness. Surely, one could not ask for much more intrepid behaviour than this?

We returned to the B & B just after 11.00 that night and slept soundly. Although the most exciting part of the trip was over, there were still important things that had to be done on Friday and Saturday.

Friday morning, and Mark and Corinna set off to the library. Lisa went into town to get the underwater camera film developed, and Richard and I stayed back at the B & B to do our final interviews with Jon Ronson, and to plan our next move.

On the second trip to the library, the documents that Mark had arranged to see on his visit the day before, were not as expected, as they were completely irrelevent to the investigation; being planning applications, speed restrictions, proposals, fishing rights and various minutes. Mentioning this to the librarian, Mark was told that we would have to go to the records office at Kendal if we wished to obtain more detailed information. However, not to be thwarted, Mark and Corinna delved deeper into a small shelf of press cuttings, pamphlets, and articles relating to Lake Windermere and the surrounding parishes, from which they found a few relevant references to fishing. Just before leaving, somewhat dejectedly, Mark was photocopying the few scraps of pertinent material that they had found (as they did not feel it wise to return to basecamp empty handed!). As the photocopier slowly and laboriously went about its business, Corinna was gazing towards the busy keyboard activity in the computer section when, looking beyond the monitors and the heads of those busy sending their emails, she noticed some wall cupboards. Not hoping for anything significant she wandered up to them, but upon inspecting them closely, was excited to notice that they were, in fact, holding quite a few books of great interest. A key was hurriedly obtained from the librarian.

They found volumes of the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society from 1886 onwards, some of which were unfortunately missing. However, from these and a few other publications they managed to find some useful material, for example a reference in a book entitled A Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland by the Rev. H.A. MacPherson published in 1892 to various eels in Lake Windermere, including one that was caught weighing 9lbs, in the mid-19th Century.

Articles photocopied, Mark and Corinna returned to the B & B, satisfied that they had completed their mission satisfactorily.

By this time, Jon and Laura had caught the train to London, and the rest of us made our way to the foot of Lake Windermere to investigate the Aquarium of the Lakes. Since the age of four I have been visiting aquariums, museums and zoos across the world and I am not easily impressed, but this was one of the nicest, and best laid out theme aquariums that I have ever visited. I was particularly pleased when the marketing director came up to me, introduced herself and during our conversation on the subject of pugative giant eels, both in Windermere and Coniston Water, not only did not call me an idiot for believing in such things, but offered to help in any way that she could. If, during next year’s investigations, we do indeed manage to catch an eel significantly larger than it should be, we have already been told that we can exhibit it at the Aquarium of the Lakes, and that as far as possible their resources are at our disposal.
There isn’t that much more to tell for the Friday. We took a trip on one of the steamer ferries around the islands in Bowness Bay (although whenever I saw or heard the name Bowness, I took a leaf out of Ransome’s book and renamed it Rio). This was not just for fun, but to get photographs and film clips that can be used in the documentary film that we plan to make of this project.

That evening we met up with Kevin and his family, and we took them out to dinner. Kevin’s wife and other two daughters were incredibly kind and enthusiastic, and all want to be involved in the next stage of the operation. Kevin was ridiculously apologetic about his lack of success in finding any eels, and seemed to think that somehow it was all his fault! We reassured him, and showed him the photographs which he had taken which prove beyond any doubt that we are using the right equipment and m.o. He also told us that when he returned to Coniston that morning to retrieve the buoys and bait sacks, that something had taken substantial chunks out of the squid which we had left, although the herring had been left untouched! Proof again that we are on the right track!

On Saturday we tidied up a few loose ends. We visited the Steamboat Museum where I got ridiculously overemotional at seeing two of the pivotal boats in the Swallows and Amazons saga for real. The Amazon, a sailing dinghy bought by Dr. Altoynam for the real-life Swallows in 1928, and an ancient and venerable motor yacht called the Esperance which is not only the oldest motorboat on Lloyds Register, but was the model for Captain Flint’s houseboat, both in the books and the 1974 movie.

We then visited Kendal, where we photographed some rare birds in the museum, before saying our goodbyes to Richard and Lisa. Corinna, Mark and I drove across the Pennines to Hebden Bridge for the last objective of the trip.

It would have been ludicrous to have travelled all this distance, worked so hard, and talked to so many people, without meeting Steve Burnip face to face. Because of delays which were completely beyond our control, we were unable to make the original rendezvous at 2.30 pm, so by dint of mobile ‘phone (how on earth did explorers in the pre-digital age manage?) we finally met Steve in a car park in the middle of the pretty Yorkshire town just as it was getting dark.

There was not much that Steve could add to what he had already told Richard on the telephone, and what had already been printed in the newspaper, but once again we were touched by the sincerity of his account. He showed us the original of the photograph he had taken, still on his digital camera, and zoomed in. What had been merely discolourations in the water on the version that had been rather badly reproduced by the Westmorland Gazette, were actually what appeared to be quite sizeable humps. We hope that as time goes by we shall be able to persuade Steve to let us have a copy for our own use.

As we headed down the M1 towards Corinna’s house in Lincolnshire, we made plans for the next step. If we are to succeed in our endeavour in proving that there are indeed eels considerably larger than they are supposed to be in the deep waters of the Lake District, it is going to take a considerable amount of effort.

I am hoping that Eric Gaskell’s friends will come up trumps, and that we will have several boats to play with on Windermere itself. If we do, and if we can get permission from the relevant authorities to dive, I want to seriously consider carrying out a project similar to Operation Deep Scan which was carried out in Loch Ness in the 1980s by Adrian Shine.

I am also giving serious consideration to approaching the ferry companies. I wonder if they would be prepared to donate us season tickets and allow us to use sonar of the ferries which traverse large sections of the lake including the places where huge eels were seen during June and July this year. Kevin has pledged his support, and we are hoping that we will be able to get donations of time and equipment from other divers.

I am also hoping to involve various community groups like the boy scouts, the sea cadets and the angling clubs. As we scan the depths of the lake and attempt to the beasts with Predator Plus, I want as many ‘foot soldiers’ as possible stationed on the banks, and on the islands, with binoculars, long range cameras, and notebooks. This could be the largest cryptozoological investigation ever mounted on British soil.

If there are indeed large eels in Coniston Water and Windermere we are damn well going to find them!

WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN – PART ONE

It’s been several weeks since I wrote in this blog, but – as I often say – so much has happened, that I think I can be forgiven.

Last weekend, Corinna and I went to the Festival of Fishkeeping at Hayling Island in Hampshire. We were there more in our capacity as deputy editor of Tropical World magazine (and his missus), than for any other reason, but several events of interest took place.

Back in March, the two of us visited the British Tarantula Society Open Show at some eminently forgettable, and particularly grey and wet, corner of the West Midlands. Although the traffic was dreadful and the weather was worse, we had a spectacularly successful day. Amongst other things, we made contact for the first time in years with a geezer called Graham Smith – an old friend of the CFZ, with whom we had lost contact a long time ago. Graham is one of the leading lights in the invertebrate keepers community, and we had a long and fruitful discussion about a number of projects on which we want to collaborate, including the possibility that we shall launch a new magazine aimed at those who eschew gerbils, guinea pigs, and pussy cats, and would rather keep unusual pets.

Over the intervening seven months, the idea has begun to grow in an organic manner. However, it wasn’t until the Weird Weekend in late August that events conspired to make me cross enough to actually start the ball rolling, and put my nebulous plans into action. As many of you know, we have an open house policy, and so when some people wandered into my garden, grimaced at me, and introduced themselves as folk planning to set up “an animal attraction”, we sat them down and listened to what they had to say. When we heard that they planned a return to the bad old days of exhibiting animals as some sort of freak show, and that they had no interest in breeding, conservation or educational work, my hackles began to rise.

At Hayling Island we ran in to another old acquaintance of mine – a jolly nice chap called Chris Newman who, for many years, has been one of the leading lights of the herpetological community. For some years now he has been mounting a campaign to try and thwart the attempts by so-called animal rights pressure groups to end private reptile keeping in the UK.

I realised then that, especially as the CFZ have an ever growing collection of exotics, that we use as part of our on-going commitment to education (and also because we are keen amateur herpetologists ourselves), we need to throw ourselves into the fray alongside people like Chris Newman. When we are confronted my feckless idiots like those we met at the weekend who seem hell bent on treating our fellow inhabitants of spaceship earth as if they were merely easily expendable adjuncts to a third rate theme park, we have come to realise that it is up to people like us to give a positive image to exotic pet keeping, and provide a forum where the subject can be openly discussed, and where information on keeping unusual pets can be readily available.

During the weekend, I managed to fulfil one longstanding ambition. As regular readers will know, from 1989 and 2001 the CFZ were proud owners of a two-toed amphiuma called Cuddles. What is an amphiuma I hear you ask? (Actually I don’t, but I am indulging my whimsical side for your entertainment). There are three species of amphiuma – heavily specialised, and primitive, salamanders. They are almost exclusively aquatic and look like long fat eels with teensy weensy stubby legs. Cuddles was four foot long when she died, and I have been frantically looking for a replacement ever since. Through the kind offices of Chris Newman, I am now £60 poorer, but the proud owner of a pair of three toed amphiumas called Gumbo and The Moog. (Don’t ask me, ask Corinna). They are only about 18” long at present, but I am confident that they will eventually reach their full size of nearly a metre.

My employers, Simon and Debbie Woolstencroft of Tropical World magazine, were kind enough to allow me to put my new acquisitions on the stall, and I am very glad that they did.

So many people were interested in these bizarre and strangely beautiful (in an ugly sort of way) animal that it’s confirmed for me – as if any confirmation was needed – that a magazine covering the more obscure herps, inverts, fish, and indeed other exotic animals that can be kept as pets, can only be a good thing. It will be written by hobbyists for hobbyists. The aim – like everything else the CFZ does – is not to make money, but to do it because it is simply a good thing to do.

Watch this space.

Where do we go from Here? Is it down to the lake I fear? fa-fa-fa-fa......

Curiouser and curiouser......

When I wrote the last blog entry a week or so ago, the Lake Windermere investigation was still in its infancy, but if - as Harold Wilson is supposed to have said - a week is a long time in politics, then it can be a bloody long time in cryptozoology! It's one of the weirdest things about this business that something is always afoot!

I have always wanted to use the stupid analogy of London buses with cryptozoology; that you wait for ages for one to turn up, and then shed-loads of unknown animals crawl out of the woodwork at times. But that just ain't so! Since the internet made truly global and almost instantaeneous communication a reality, rather than part of one of Arthur C Clarke's pipe dreams, we receive more information on the subject of unknown animals than we know what to do with. Practically every day something gets reported to us, and it is sometimes a very real temptation to get blase about it all. However the vast majority of these reports are from far-flung parts of the world, and in most of these cases we can do little but post the news on our forum, and file it away in our every expanding archive.

Of course, we do have a fighting fund, so that if we are overtaken by events we can fly off at a moment's notice to investigate somethig, but on the whole our foreign trips take some months to organise, and I will admit that it is one of my enduring paranoias that one of these days something will happen that will force us to organise a foreign trip on a moment's notice.

There have been several occasions in the past few years when we have had to mobilise as a `rapid response team` in order to investigate a UK based mystery. The most notable were Martin Mere (2002), Bolam Lake (2003) and the Cannock Crocodile (2003), but I have a sneaking suspicion that the events that are rapidly unfolding on Lake Windermere are going to knock all of the above into a cocked hat.

Our appeal in the Westmoreland Gazette was an overwhelming success.We have now received six witness statements which appear to be of large eels in the lake - what's more; they stretch back over the last half century, so although there is no canonical history of lake monster sightings per se in the Lake District, it does seem that there is a very real mystery to investigate. The most interesting thing about these reports is that not only do they cover a long time frame, but some of them are unquestionably reports of eels, but eels considerably larger than any that are accepted by ichthyologists at the present day. If we can catch or photograph one of these - even if it isn't the monstrous 10-15 footer that was reported by three separate witnesses in July, we are - in my humble opinion - well on our way to proving our big eel hypothesis as an explanation for the animals reported in monster-haunted lakes all across the northern hemisphere.

I waxed lyrical on this subject nearly a year ago after Richard's and my short trip to Loch Ness last November. I quote:

"The European eel (Anguillia anguilla) lives in freshwater until it reaches sexual maturity when the reproductive imperative kicks in and the elongate fish swim down to the sea where (according to most sources) they cannot feed, and swim down to the Sargasso Sea in the South Atlantic where they mate, spawn and die. The larval eels (known as leptocephelae)are the shape of leaves and about the size of a little fingernail. They sweim up the Atlantic to coastal waters where they metamorphose into tiny eels called elvers. These swim up the rivers and the cycle begins again. Howeverr, it has been suggested that occasionally an elver becomes sterile, and so when its peers have attained a length of 4-6 feet and sexual maturity, the biological imperative does not kick in and the eunuch eel (as theyhave been dubbed) stay in freshwater and continue to grow.

This is partly hypothesis, but it makes a fair amount of sense and would certainly explain some of the lake monster sightings which have taken place across the northern hemisphere. For years one of the main stumbling blocks for a viable population of giant animals living in any of the monster-haunted lakes (with the possible exception of Lake Okanagan in Canada, and some of the lesser known lakes in Siberia and Tibet), is the sheer lack of biomass in the waters. There just simply isn't enough food to support them. Another problem is thatthe prehistoric giant reptiles were all e=air breathers, and would have to surface to breathe, and presumably come onto land to breed. There are just simply not enough sightings of these creatures to support such a hypothesis.If, however, our hypothesis is true then we can scratch both of these objections immediately: They obtain their oxygen from the water, and they are occasional visitors or mutations rather than an unknown species of animal."

So there you have it. A small expeditionary force from the CFZ, which will include Me and Richard, and two or three others will be going up to Windermere in the second week of October, and once again the game is afoot.

I am just wondering whether I should insist that everyone reads at least one Arthur Ransome book before we go...

WEIRD WINDERMERE

As anyone who has read my inky fingered scibblings both here and elsewhere will know, I have long been a fan of the children's author Arthur Ransome . He is best known for his Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, but he was also a folklorist, commentator on the Russian Revolution, and ligitant of Oscar Wilde's one-time lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

But, like most people I first discovered (and fell in love with) the prose of Swallows and Amazons and its successors. I first read the books in Hong Kong during the second half of the 1960s, and - together with my young compadres - used to relive the adventures of the young protagonists in the books, without paying much attention to the fact that they had been set half a globe away, and some forty years in the past!

It was only when I read a remarkable analysis of the stories by author Christine Hardyment, entitled Nancy Blackett and Captain Flint's trunk, that I discovered - not altogether to my surprise - that Ransome had been somewhat of an armchair cryptozoologist. Amongst fragments written down as the suggestions for a future S&A adventure, included one when they were to travel to Kenya, and have an adventure involving the notorious Nandi Bear.

But what is Downes getting at? I hear you mutter in my mind's ear. This is all very interesting, but is there any point to it?

Well, yes. Ummm sort of.

On the thursday of the Weird Weekend I received a telephone call from a jolly nice chap at the Westmoreland Gazette who tld me that his august publication had just printed the following story:

"A HOLIDAYMAKER has spoken of his horror at seeing a Loch Ness-type monster' emerge from the depths of Windermere, report Paul Duncan and Peter Otway. University lecturer Steve Burnip and his wife, Eileen, were shocked at seeing the serpent-like creature surface from the waters as they stood at a well-known viewpoint. "I was absolutely flabbergasted, I just stood there and couldn't believe what I was looking at," said Mr Burnip, who has been holidaying in the area for 13 years with his family. He claimed the creature was about 15-20ft long with a little head and two small humps following in its wake. "It was like a giant eel." Mr Burnip, who is 51 and from Hebden Bridge, was looking out from Watbarrow point that looks across the lake to Waterhead. Ian Winfield, a fish ecologist for the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Lancaster University, believes Mr Burnip could have seen a catfish, as they have been introduced to a lot of lakes for angling. "The Wels catfish comes from mainland Europe and can grow to about 500cm and weigh up to 306kg and there have been numerous records of catfish washing up dead in Cumbrian lakes," said Mr Whitfield. "

Hmmmmmmm, I thought.

The newspaper contacted us because a simple google search for o-o-p wels catfish in the UK comes up with the CFZ. Mostly because of our adventures four years back at Martin Mere but also because of an article I wrote after an old age pensioner's jack russell had been eaten by an errant wels in a boating lake in Germany. I entitled the story "Ding Dong Bells, Doggy's in the Wels", which amused me and infuriated my editor.

However, since then - for better or for worse - me and the boys have been considered experts in out-of-place wels catfish ever since. The fact that this animal (if indeed it is an animal) beas aboiut as much resemblance to a wels catfish as I do to an olympic athlete, has not very much to do with it!

Anyway. Over the past few weeks we have interviewed the witness, and Richard F (who did the main interview) is particularly impressed with the veracity of his story. Most recently, we have placed an appeal in the newspaper which first ran the story, asking for more witnesses and further information. We have had a couple of interesting `phone calls so far, and will keep you in the loop as to what is happening. There may well be a CFZ trip oop t'north in the offing, and when it happens you guys will be the first to know.

But what the £$%^%^&&&* has all this to do with Arthur Ransome? You might well ask!

The main canon of the Swallows & Amazons stories are set on an un-named lake in the Lake District, that according to Christine Hardyment (and others) is a composite place comprised of various bits of Coniston Water and Lake Windermere itself. As Wikipedia succinctly put it:

"Generally, the geography of the lake resembles Windermere (though Wild Cat Island has a number of important elements from Peel Island on Coniston Water) while the fells and hills surrounding it more resemble the area around Coniston"..

But there is more revelance to the current quest than this. More relevance even that one of the original dinghys from the story can still be found in the local museum at Lake Windermere.

When I was a boy I used to spice up my Ransomesque adventures with my pals into Swallows & Amazonish hunts for mystery animals. Eventually me, my mate William Topley (where the hell are you dude? I have had no contact wityh you since 1970), and a handful of others became a close knit gang whose main raison d'etre was avoiding doing what society told us to (in those days - going to school), and hunting for mystery animals.

Four decades later I am doing exactly the same thing. Maybe the children's book featured in today's blog should have been Peter Pan!

I'm back... and this time it's personal

Hi folks,

It has been about three weeks since I last wrote on this blog, and newbies might have wondered what has happenned.

Firstly - a nice reason:

It was my 47th Birthday a few days after the Weird Weekend, and Corinna and I went away on holiday for a few days. We went to Jersey, mainly to visit Jersey Zoo, which was founded just before I was born by my hero Gerald Durrell.

I first went there forty years ago in the summer of 1966, and I have to admit that I was rather disappointed. Even at the age of seven I had read many of Durrell's books and I was expecting to see a marvellous zoo. Even at the age of seven, I was disappointed. It was obviously home-made and down at heel. The cages were made out of orange crates and chicken wire, and the whole place had a dilapidated air about it.

It was only when I read Douglas Botting's masterful biography of Durrell, that I realised that I had first visited the place at a pivotal moment in its history! He had left the zoo in the care of his old friend Ken Smith, ex-Whipsnade, and later the founder of Exmouth Zoo. Smith is a somewhat maligned figure in the hagiography of Durrell, because under his tutelage the zoo became very shambolic indeed, and was in imminent danger of closing. It should be said at this juncture, that having run the CFZ for nearly fifteen years, I am only too aware of what a difficult job juggling financial matters is, and I sincerely doubt whether Ken Smith should really be blamed for what happened. Gerry, however, did blame him, and he was summarily sacked.

My first visit forty years ago coincided with the initial time when Gerry and his team were desparately clawing themselves back from the brink of bankruptcy. Forty years on, and the zoo is a completely different affair.

Firtstly, it is not a zoo in the accepted sense of the word! During out four day sojourn on the island, we met several locals who felt they had been short-changed by the Durrell Organisation. "They took away our zoo", we were told. "There are no lions, and tigers. Even the snow leopards have gone", they said. And worse of all, it seems that some of the locals resented the way that "Jersey Zoo", had been replaced by "Durrell's". The island had lost a valuable amenity, some folk seem to think, but of course that just ain't true.

I have been to zoos all across the world. Until now, my two favourites were Pine Valley in New South Wales, where, in 1968, I saw my first (and to date only) living platypus, and Toronto Zoo in Canada. However, my heart now does entirely belong to Les Augres Manor in Jersey.

The local people are right. It isn't a proper zoo! It is what zoos should be but very seldom are. The exhibits are not just a parade of rare animals there to be gawked at, but are just the creatures that the organisation is studying at that moment. The visitor feels immenseley priveliged (or at least I did), to be allowed to be a part of such a magickal organisation, if only for a few hours.

The list of current breeding programmes makes impressive reading, but I think that the most touching exhibit was the wildfowl hide deep in the reed beds which have been planted in the central valley of the zoo. In most zoos, it is sad to say that when you see a sign reading `wildlife area` it is a synonym for "useless bit of land that we couldn't decide what to do with". At Jersey, the truth is completely different. Not only has an enormous amount of money and effort been expended on restoring some extraordinary reed beds, but these reed beds also include three extraordinary exhibits. The first is a colony of gentle lemurs which are notable for being the only primate species found exclusively in marshland. Alongside these is a bird hide from which you can watch wild specimens of some of the rarest of the British avifauna, and another hide marked only as "Teal hide".

One enters this exhibit thinking that one is going to be able to sit down and watch some native ducks going about their business, and one is immediately entranced to discover that instead you have been miraculously transported to a corner of Malagasy wetland where critically endangered Madagascan waterfowl are living and breeding. The scope of this project is simply breathtaking, and to see these animals, as near as possible in their wild habitat, is an awe inspiring experience.

We returned to the mnainland UK, secure in the knowledge that ten years after his death, Gerald Durrell's dream is in very safe hands indeed! The experience has given me several ideas as to how (on a far smaller scale), we can set out our own visitor's centre when it opens next year.

Secondly - a nasty reason:

As many of you know, I suffer from a Bipolar Disorder, commonly known as Manic Depression.

I have had this condition all my life, and have been registered disabled for the last ten years! I have been receiving treatment for many years, and am fully aware that this disease, which is increasingly debilitating, will be with me for the rest of my life.

Within days of our return to England I was struck down by the most debilitating bout of this disease that I have had for years. For the last ten days I have hardly left my bed; I have been practically unable to walk, think, or even speak for any length of time, and even today - my first day out of bed for nearly ten days - it has taken four hours plus to write this blog entry - something which would normally have taken me about twenty minutes.

I tell you this not to ask for your sympathy. The last bad bout I had lasted four months and damn near killed me. But I want to explain why the CFZ has become very quiet over the last few weeks. Several members of the CFZ Directorate have their own health problems,and I think that is important that we share our struggles with you all. The CFZ is not only a scientific organisation; it is also testament to the fact that many people in society are `written off`, and put onto the scrapheap. These people - and I am proud to include myself in this category - are, in fact, capable of achieving extraordinary things.

Of course, our present government will tell you that they are doing what they can to bring disabled people back into the workplace. Bullshit! What they are doing is trying to cut the Social Security budget by forcing the long-term ill to take jobs that may or may not be therapeutic for them. As in so many other ways in life, I am exceedingly proud to be able to hold my head high and state that the CFZ are part of an increasingly beleagured enclave of people doing our best to fight a gallant rearguard action against the inreasingly corporate world outside.... just the same as Durrell Wildlife.

Long may we (and they) be able to continue!

Weird Weekend 2006 - More Pictures

Gothboy lends a hand with Jessica's assult on the pinada

Jonathan McGowan's exhibition

Bob Morrell's exhibition

L-R Larry Warren, Nick Redfern, Corinna, Me, (kneeling) Lars Thomas

Me and Rich on stage

Rich tends the CFZ stall

The Quiz Team (Home) L-R Jo, Ross, Mark Martin

The away team: L-R Dr Darren Naish, Dr Lars Thomas, Jon Ronson

Richard masterminds the `Mad Hatter's Tea Party`

The Gambia expedition team take questions

Jeremy Harte is soooo rock & roll

The three boys wish me `happy birthday`

Lisa gives me Ross and Greg's birthday cake

The goatman cometh

Greg Phillips: "monsters are cool"

Weird Weekend 2006 - Speakers Dinner

L-R Suzi Marsh, Matt Osbourne, Helen Lester, Steve Jones, Richard Freeman, (top right, Ronan Coghlan and Tania Poole)

L-R Lisa Dowley, Suzi Marsh, Helen Lester, Steve Jones, Richard Freeman

L-R Darren Naish, Larry Warren, Jonathan McGowan, Nick Redfern

Lisa and Suzi

Weird Weekend 2006 - Picture Gallery

My surrogate Mum gets an `Access all Areas` pass

The village children certainly enjoyed themselves

My next door neighbour and young friend attack the pinada

Matthew Williams does his own inimitable thing

It's only rock and roll, but I like it

David Phillips - without him we couldn't have managed the event

Redders mans the barbecue

Weird Weekend: The Final Day

I remember when I was a little boy, every Christmas, my little brother would burst into tears at the end of the day because it was all over for another year. At the age of nearly 47 I know exactly how he felt.

Saturday had been an extremely stressfull day; it had been a success, but there were 101 tiny issues (and one larger one) which had to be dealt with, and by the end of the day I was so tired that I could hardly walk, let alone think. But sunday was a delightfull day, an emotional rollercoaster which saw me almost burst into tears at one stage.

First up was Paul Vella. I have known Paul for years, and for the last three years he has offered to give a talk at the Weird Weekend, and to my eternal embarrassment I have forgotten to put him on the bill - until this year. I am not doubly embarrassed, because he was bloody fantastic! Although during the rest of the weekend, I had been fairly strict about keeping to the schedule, he was so popular, and engendered such an impressive dialogue with the audience, that his 45 minute talk lasted nearly an hour and a half - with absolutely NO complaints.

Then came Jeremy Harte, who told of the folkloric accounts of how monsters - mostly dragons and wildmen - had been captured by use of alcohol. His talk was particularly interesting, when, during the discussion on wildmen, a three way discussion between him, Ronan, and Richard F, took the audience by storm.

Chris Moiser gave an entertaining and informative talk about the mystery of the Wrangaton Lion, and explained how the recently introduced Freedom of Information Act has been an invaluable boon to British mystery cat researchers. Chris, by the way, has been the only speaker, apart from Richard Freeman, to have appeared at every Weird Weekend since we started.

Then came Larry Warren - one of the most eagerly awaited speakers of the weekend. Since arrived on Thursday he had quickly endeared himself to both the children and the adults of the village. He had been playing with the kids all weekend, and had also become a firm favourite up at the pub! His Rendlesham Forest talk brought the house down, and there are now North Devonians from the age of 8 to 75 who are devoted Warrenophiles.

Next up were C.A.S, a local band, put together by David Phillips, who works at the CFZ during school holidays and at weekends. They are all fourteen, and the line up were:

Tully Reynolds Vox
Chris Buse Lead Guitar
Richard Harding Rhythm Guitar
Jeremy Manning Bass
David Phillips Drums
George Snell Yeti

I gave them my best Sam Cutler introduction, and Matt Williams provided lasers and smoke, and for a brief three minutes, we were transported back to Woodstock!

But then came the surprise. I have known David's family for thirty-five years, and his mother, Kaye, is more like a sister to me than a friend. David grabbed a microphone, and together with his two young brothers Ross, and Greg, read me a poem they had written, and presented me with a birthday cake nmade by the two younger boys. It was then, for the first and only time onstage, that I very nearly burst into tears!

Then came Ronan Coghlan, someone without whom I cannot imagine evr having a Weird Weekend. He is opne of the most naturally funny people that I have ever met, and he was undoubtedly the most entertaining speaker of the whole weekend. His talk on the goatman legends around the world, from ancient Greece, to moderm-day America.

I wrapped up the proceedings with a few words on the activities of the CFZ over the last year, and what we hoped to achieve in the future, and then it was all over!

There are so many people that I would like to thank for their help this weekend. Apart from the speakers, there were the stage crew! When we started the Weird Weekend back in 2000, it was put together by me, Richard, Graham, and Nichola Sullings - a crew of four. Now, I had a crew of over twenty!

LISA DOWLEY: Security/Floor Manager
DAVID PHILLIPS: Sound and Light
MATTHEW WILLIAMS: AV/crew
MATTHEW OSBOURNE: Road Crew
PETER CHANNON: Road Crew
JOHN FULLER: CFZ Staff/retail
MARK MARTIN: Security
JOHN GLEDSON: CFZ TV/First unit Cameraman
DAN GARRAWAY: CFZ TV/Second unit Cameraman
GRAHAM INGLIS: CFZ Management/Driver/Third Unit Cameraman
ROY PHILLIPS: Driver/crew
ROSS PHILLIPS: Floor Liaison
GREG PHILLIPS: Floor Liaison
OLL LEWIS: CFZ Staff/tour guide
NICHOLA SULLINGS: PA (Friday)
RICHARD FREEMAN: CFZ Management/Asst. Floor Manager (Friday)/Compere
MARK NORTH: CFZ Management/Photographer/Retail
CORINNA JAMES: CFZ Management/Retail/Admin
BRIAN BUTLER: Community Centre Liaison
HELEN BOND: CFZ Infrastructure
SUZI MARSH: PA/Admin/crew/retail

That evening in the pub, someone asked me what the point of the whole thing was. I told him that although it is the only English speaking cryptozoological conference in Europe, it is more than that. The CFZ is fast becoming a truly global community, and the Weird Weekend is the one time in the year that this community meets in the flesh. It is a place to see old friends, and to meet new ones. It is a place where people of all ages (3-80+ this weekend), all nationalities (11, this weekend), and from all walks of life can get together, have fun, and be happy.

In the modern world, occasions like this are a real rarity, and it truly has been a very weird (and heartwarming) weekend.