Fishing For Change: Tales From a Galloway Guest House (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780956238061)

In the late spring of 1991, dedicated health professional, football nut, devoted father, and angling obsessive Ken Barlow upped sticks from his home in Tyneside and took off for south-west Scotland in search of a new life.

He certainly found it.

Ken and his wife, Jackie, set about taking over the Palakona Guest House and fishing business in the town of Newton Stewart in Dumfries and Galloway, and found themselves knee deep in much more than loch weeds and Scottish heather. In the years that followed, Ken learned an awful lot about the area and its people, and about its waters and the fish that inhabit them.

In Fishing For Change, Ken describes the many adventures - and misadventures - he and his nearest and dearest witnessed during their time as proprietors of the Palakona. With plenty of laugh-out-loud anecdotes about the angler's lot, as well as touching and fascinating accounts of the people who shared the Barlow's company during the period, it's a brilliant memoir of a life lived to the full.