Catching the elusive lobster

"It started as an urge to catch things... I've had it since a small boy... minnows first in a flour bag net, then roach... even gudgeon from the canal, grass snakes.

When I was older... trout.

When the mortgage was payed off... salmon.

My father was an expert in everything he did, and I couldn't compete with him... but we did have one meeting point... lobsters... catching them by hand.

Gower, where we spent family holidays, juts out into the Bristol Channel where there is a huge rise and fall in tide. Once a month, rocks are exposed where lobsters and crabs hide.

I go down Slade Valley to the sea as excited at 60 as I was at seven. Left along the Brinks... at Lucas point I follow a gully going out to the sea, and No-Man... an island at low tide... twenty foot buried at high... barren? not a bit of it... this is Ellis's pool... the only lobster hole my father showed me... there may be one at the back of the underwater ledge... got one?... yes... but a bit small... back it goes.

Here's a better haul with me looking a bit smug... well, they're not bad, are they?

When I was a young man, my ambition was to catch a lobster to match my father's best. That big one was elusive. When was it going to come? Then, just three weeks before my father died, I caught it... and a pool full of lobster it was too... and I showed it to my dad.

It was as if a spell had been broken... just in time."

Tony whistling - "Ar lan y Mor"

Where are you from Tony?
I'm glad that I grew up in Neath, in the fifties, next to the wild Gnoll grounds and Cefn Morfudd. That's where I spent all of my time, spare or not, until I was sixteen. I taught horticulture until I retired to the Gower coast.

What's your story about?
My story is about a lobster, and of a boy's attempts to impress his father. I wanted to show how my life has been involved with nature: catching it, photographing it and horticulture. There is a hint of competitiveness in it too, I suppose.

How did you find the workshop?
Fabulous. The nine other participants in the group were such lovely people. We were helped at every stage by a BBC team who were kind helpful and enthusiastic. We didn't want it to finish.