Smoked and Uncut - Lime Wood

12 Limewire
In Rod
We Trust
As Jill Grieve, Casting For Recovery’s chairman,
explains: “It all came about when our
Executive Director Sue Hunter, who had
suffered from breast cancer, was invited
fishing by a male friend. She wasn’t sure
about going, but eventually said ‘why not?’...
and she loved it!”
“Then she found out about fly-fishing schemes to help women
in the USA and Canada who had been affected by breast
cancer, and decided to bring it over to Britain and Ireland. She
approached the Countryside Alliance, who wrote out a cheque
to get the idea off the ground, and the charity has been growing
steadily ever since.”
The idea is quite simple. Casting For Recovery funds weekend
retreats in a number of locations around Britain and Ireland –
“they need to be high-end, beautiful locations, with suitable
residential accommodation” – at which groups of women meet to
try their hand at casting flies. Most have little or no experience of
fishing, but are guided through every step by a team of dedicated,
voluntary tutors.
“Just getting out in the countryside is part of the therapy for
many women”, says Jill. “We have ladies from Clapham Junction,
or the middle of Manchester, who tell us that they just wouldn’t
get the chance to do something like this normally. Many of them
are worried about holding their families together during their
illness, and they really appreciate having everything done for
This September will see the fifth anniversary of
one of Britain and Ireland’s most extraordinary
charities. Casting For Recovery, which
organises fly-fishing retreats for women who
have suffered – or are suffering – from breast
cancer, held its first retreat in West Sussex,
in September 2007.
them for a change: coming back from the river to a cream tea,
for instance.”
“There are many types of cancer, and many different surgeries,
but casting is always possible, and the weekends offer the chance
to talk to other women who are at different stages in the recovery
process, and realise that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Counselling sessions are available to guests, too, and, as Jill puts
it, “the focus is definitely on wellness, not illness. The American
retreats are a bit more touchy-feely: we’ve anglicised them
a bit, but there is a real feeling of togetherness. And a bit
of competitiveness usually creeps in! One of our ladies from
Ireland, who had never fished before, is now an international
fly-fisherman.”
The charity has attracted a remarkable response from people all
over the UK and Ireland: Clay Brendish, owner of the superb
Kimbridge on the Test fishery in Hampshire, is Patron of Casting
For Recovery, and many of the other venues for retreats have
become actively involved in fundraising.
Casting For Recovery now holds half a dozen retreats a year, and,
according to Jill, many more are planned. “Our eventual aim is
to hold a retreat every weekend, but in the meantime we’re just
building slowly each year.” As they say in fly-fishing, more power
to their elbows.
www.castingforrecovery.org.uk