The Cher that everyone knows from school geography — the broad sand-and-weed river that flows under the chateaux of the Loire — has an upper section that nobody on holiday ever seems to visit. It rises in the Combraille granite of the Creuse département and for its first forty kilometres it is a proper wild trout river, running through bocage and small woods, rarely more than a few yards wide, rarely more than a couple of feet deep in the ordinary runs. The kind of water where a good fish is a foot long and you are happy about it. The hatches are honest — Baetis, caddis, occasional March Browns — and the trout are wild and free-rising in the warmer months. Fish the nymph in April and early May while the water is still cold, then shift to dry fly once the caddis build through the second half of May. The best water is in the middle reach, above Montluçon, where the river cuts through old farm country and the banks are overgrown enough to make short rods and careful casting worth the trouble. There is no glamour in the upper Cher. There is just a decent small river doing what small rivers do, very quietly, with nobody watching.

• Granite