Friday 20 May 2022 11:13 PM ROBERT HARDMAN takes an inspirational voyage with Britain's first female ... trends now

The locals are only just starting to stir, but Ashley Mullenger is already on the quayside heaving crab and whelk pots onto the open deck of a 30 ft fishing boat, alongside a stack of extremely whiffy and long-dead dogfish which are seriously testing my gag reflexes.

These will be going back into the sea — as bait — once Ashley has chopped them up and stuffed them in the pots. Regardless of the weather, she will have to haul another 400 pots out of the North Sea and sort through the contents. It will be dark by the time she is back on dry land later tonight.

On a relatively calm and clement day like this, in a small boat (with minimal shelter and no loo) it will be hard graft for the next 12 hours. In a freezing January gale, it is frankly brutal. Yet there is nowhere Ashley would rather be. For this is her dream job. And she is very good at it.

Her palpable, infectious enthusiasm for one of the most unforgiving professions in the world has just earned her the accolade of Fisherman of the Year.

And don’t even think of calling her anything else.

‘It’s enough to make you dry heave,’ she jokes when I suggest I should be calling her the first Fisherwoman of the year. Worse still was a BBC news report not long ago which famously talked about Fisherpeople. That certainly had them all guffawing here in the harbour at Wells-next-the-Sea on the North Norfolk coast, where Ashley is now the toast of the town.

‘That word can only have been invented by a man — and a man who’s never been to sea,’ laughs Ashley.

Like all those I talk to round here, she isn’t remotely interested in the culture wars raging on our university campuses and social media. This is that un-woke part of British society — dare one call it the majority? — who are not obsessing over minority issues, ‘triggers’ or Georgian Britain’s imperial conduct.

‘Just a load of b******s,’ says another mariner, Ben Riches, 43, further down the quay, speaking for everyone. ‘You can’t say anything without offending someone now.’

‘It’s nonsense,’ says Ashley’s shipmate, Nigel Storey, as he helps her get the boat ready for sea. ‘There’s more important things going on in the world.’

Ex-Royal Navy, Nigel is the skipper of the Scottish-built potting boat, Fair Lass (a thoroughly apt name, though it long predates Ashley’s arrival). However, it is abundantly clear that this two-man (remember, don’t say ‘person’) operation is a partnership. For Ashley has now bought a share of Fair Lass and of her sister vessel, the smaller 26ft Saoirse.

Until Ashley secures the requisite skipper’s licence, it is Nigel who is captain. However, he says that his shipmate is more than ready to take charge.

In an industry usually associated with tough, taciturn men, this always-upbeat straight-talking woman is currently debunking every stereotype in the book. And she says there has not been a hint of resentment from an industry steeped in traditions.

‘You have to learn the rules — never say “pig” [bad luck], you can’t say “rabbit” [the Devil can apparently be disguised as one] and there’s no whistling or you might whistle up a gale,’ she tells me, heaving another crate on board. ‘But I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced any sort of sexism.’

Naturally, her presence in Wells has attracted media attention, first from the local papers and then the trade press, which has just recognised her at the industry’s annual awards. Now, she’s suddenly chatting to Piers Morgan on live TV.

In the process, she has unwittingly become something of an ambassador for our fishing fleets, especially those small British boats eking out an existence among the monster international factory ships gobbling up every living creature in the ocean.

With her natural, unspun ‘give it a go’ philosophy, I would not be entirely surprised if, one day, she does for fishing what other raw talents have done elsewhere — be it Charlie Dimmock in the garden or Jamie Oliver in the kitchen.

At the age of 35, Ashley might be happy to pose for the odd Kate Winslet-style photo on the prow but her only genuine ambition is to get her skipper’s licence and always land a decent catch.

So does she want to see more women at sea? ‘This is an industry where we just want to see more people full stop. Male or female, I’m not bothered. But we need the next generation to get involved.’

In her case, her entry into the profession was anything but typical. She grew up inland in the Norfolk village of Great Massingham in a family of landlubbers. Her husband, Rob, a heating engineer, whom she met in her teens, has never had any interest in the sea, either. ‘He gets seasick — and luckily I don’t.’

Having studied media and drama A-levels at sixth form college, Ashley left school and walked into a job at . . . a slaughterhouse. ‘I get all the girly jobs, don’t I?’ she chuckles.