Some rivers announce themselves grandly – approach the Spey or the Yellowstone, and you can be overwhelmed. Other rivers are more carefully hidden. You drive down a single-lane road past low stone walls, and just when you think you’re lost you arrive at a small wooden bridge and look down and it’s stunning.
Turn the wrong direction, however, and you could easily miss it. That’s the case with the River Carron, which flows narrowly between dramatic rocky banks and over falls, before winding easily through meadows. The Carron runs through the grounds of the Glencalvie Estate, which is spread across more than 20,000 acres in the Highlands about an hour north-west of Inverness. The house itself is well-worn and grey, with turrets; large enough to get lost in without being ostentatious. The décor is reassuringly Scottish: tartan on tartan, taxidermy beside taxidermy, plenty of fireplaces. The estate was once owned by a Lea & Perrins heir, whose Worcestershire Sauce has improved generations of Bloody Marys. This bodes well for our chances, though starting a fishing day with a Bloody Mary might be too much of a good thing.
