Time to stop flogging it... the horse is dead

I arrived at the river at around 5pm, cracked open a beer and went for chat with some guys who were already fishing - nowt happening for them, so after an extended moan along the lines of "where have all the carp gone!" I returned to my swim and went to get out the rods... to my dismay the rod bag was curiously absent... replaying the memories of packing the car I could distinctly remember taking the bag out of the house.. "It must still be on the drive!" I thought, perhaps a bit optimistically... it was a sitting duck for any passing tealeaf.
 Thankfully I'd only had half of the bottle of beer, so I scooted back up the track and across to the other side of Nottingham, cursing the rush hour traffic that my original timetable had sought to avoid. The bag was still there, placed strategically atop the bins, so it was whipped into the car and my groundhog day journey resumed. After this soujourn it was 18:30 by the time I was set up. Everything looked perfect, I had waded the swim to confirm that all of the 80kg or so of prebait that had been deposited over the preceeding 12 days had been mopped up. Whilst I was there I placed all the baits by hand to ensure perfect presentation, each supported by a pva bag of freebies.

Somewhere in the glare of the sun is a bivvie, car, and a pair of rod tips

It was all to no avail. I had one solitary bleep during  the evening that may have been a line bite, but which coincided suspiciously with a swallows flypast, and was roused three times during the morning, once by a very convincing run off a mallard and again as the ducks, and then the swans clumsily (or deliberately??! )nudged my lines. It was a grey and chilly morning with a stiff breeze that rippled the river and chilled the bacon even as it fried.
 By my reckoning that is 6 totally blank sessions in this peg. I know many carpers can laugh in the face of 60+ hours without a run, but I'm not one of them. The horse is dead and perhaps should have stopped flogging it long ago. I tried the textbook approach of find gravel, feed and fish... this time it didnt work out!. The thing is... if I can't find a river carp here, then what should my next move be. I need a week off to think this one over... Hints anyone?