What the hell is Robert Jenrick doing in the River Teme at Leintwardine?
Readers of this blog will remember that Malcolm Saville's 11th Lone Pine Club adventure, The Secret of the Gorge, opens in this Herefordshire village, though most of the action takes place a couple of miles downstream in the Downton Gorge.
Seeing this photo of Jenrick, I was reminded in particular of this encounter with the villainous Simon Blandish in chapter 7:
Macbeth advanced and so did the Lone Piners, for they already sensed what was going to happen. Macbeth made another little sortie and again Blandish swore and kicked out at him. He missed and retreated another step. Macbeth, with wildly wagging tail, pranced proudly forward and the man fell backwards into the river. If the water, at that spot, had not been about two feet deep he might have helped hurt himself for he was a heavy man and the bank was quite high where the water, swirling under the narrow bridge. had worn it away. As it was the water broke his fall but the splash she made was prodigious
They stood on the bank and watched him wallowing like a clumsy hippopotamus, blowing river water from his mouth. He staggered to his feet, lost his balance on a slippery rock and fell in again.
“Why was he doing that to you, Dickie?” David asked quietly. “Were you being cheeky?”
“Yes. I was a bit. Mary was down on the bank and I was watching her from the bridge when Old Pudding Face came up quietly on his bike and grabbed at me and told me to clear out. Then he pulled me down here and twisted my arm and asked me all sorts of questions about us an’ then –”
“An’ then I did the danger call,” his twin went on. “And I shouted for help ... Oh, look! He's fallen in again! Let’s get him out before he poisons all the fishes.”
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