Rivers on the Edge is a short fillum I’ve been making for WWF UK to support their campaign of the same name. The film ought – if it has worked – to make it kinda clear what the campaign is about. But anyway, for those without time to sit through a whole six and a half minutes, it’s basically this – USE LESS WATER.

Chalk streams are unique. A globally significant, rich and amazing habitat. But many are on the edge of survival. Abstraction licenses were given when no-one thought the pumping of water would have an impact, when the underground aquifers that drive these streams were thought to be limitless. But they weren’t limitless and now some rivers barely exist, while all are affected.

But private water companies will not happily give up this source of cheap, clean water. If we are to save our national heritage of chalk rivers water companies have to be compelled to find other sources of water. But even if they wanted to (which some do, but most don’t), our government, via OFWAT, won’t let them. OFWAT protects the price of water.

But what price a river? A river is priceless. Especially if it is possible – which it is – to have healthy rivers and an adequate supply of affordable water.

We need to use less of it and we need to compel our government to make more sense of how we get it, so that we can see rivers like the Beane, the Darenth, the Misbourne, the Og flowing again as they used to.

Join the WWF’s campaign. Adopt your local chalk stream if you’re lucky enough to live near one. Write to your MP.

Download the WWF report HERE.
Charles’ blog HERE.

Ben Myers, man of letters.

Next up has no relation to rivers whatsoever but I’m going to share it with you all the same. It’s a killer clip of Evie Sands doing ‘I Can’t Let Go’, and it’s just ace. (thanks Robin).

Sad news from John at Pure Piscator:

Hi All,
Unfortunately a bit of sad news to report, and that is the main part of the Pure Piscator.com site will soon cease to be updated. Sadly due to the other commitments in life, those we all face, we don’t have the time to dedicate to the site like we once did. Because of this, we feel we can’t do it justice anymore. We’re sorry for this we really are.

It’s not all bad news however, because the site won’t be deleted as such, so all of the old content will still remain in place, and who knows somebody make pick up the torch and keep the same ethos (non commerical, no adverts, no sponsorship, simple angling) going in a new site.

As for this forum, well it will stay in place as long as it’s called for. Perhaps somebody would like to set up another one and everybody can transfer to it, either way we will keep it in place until an alternative pops up. If this never happens..then who knows.

PP

Set one.
Set two. Heavenly waters glimpsed in Norway.

spotted these two eric ravillious things coming up might be worth alerting cbtr readers to:

robert macfarlane on the radio tonight
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nky5x

a few weeks time
http://stbride.org/events/ericravilious

I like driving. I like Norway. Ipso Facto, I love driving through Norway.

Decanted onto the Bergen quayside by “The Queen of Scandinavia”, we make our way through the dawn mist onto the E16 towards Voss. Ultimately, we are headed for the far North and Lapland but, like eating an elephant, that’s a journey that should only be contemplated in small bites.
Rapidly suburbs give way to vertiginous walls of rock, and fjords like obsidian mirrors. Waterfalls take the short route from the tops of towering gorges so routinely that we’re barely 30 minutes into the ride before “Wow!” has been rendered meaningless.
As my wife snoozes, and the kids in the back of our trusty Truckasaurus count the seconds it takes to pass through each of the mountain tunnels (almost losing the will to live at Laerdal), I enter my own secret world of delicious torment. At the apex of every bend…and Norway specialises in bends….I can catch a glimpse into the bottom of precipice after precipice. There, tantalising pools, clear and deep, sit at the foot of long runs of turbulent spume. I know that there are really big fish in there. In fact, I know that in each maelstrom the fish are more firm, more beautiful and more ravenous than any that I’ve ever pursued. Yet I drive on.

I’ve travelled variations of this route, from South to North, and back again several times now. With each journey, more tantalising scenes are mentally catalogued and stored…all of them perfect in every way….except the crucial one: I’m not there in the water, lost in the rhythm of anticipation, despair and triumph. No, I’m lost in the rhythm of mile after mile of turning wheels, ticked off miles and toilet breaks.

When I dream of these Arcadian waters, I can recall them in every detail….each droplet of spray hits the rock precisely as it should. The essence of moss and wet granite can be tasted on the air. I go through the motions of a cast in my mind. It is important that I practice because I believe, one day, I’ll return to fish every single one of them.

Sometimes I’m transported instantly to a very specific scene by a song. Almost every yard of the 1,000 mile journey is represented by what happened to be turning in the CD player at the time. “Uriel” by The Ark takes me to tumbling melt waters running through lightly wooded ravines on the downslope from the Swedish border to Trofors. Patty Griffin is swimming, not with the snakes at the bottom of the well, as she should be in “Forgiveness”, but in the slush puppy opaque turquoise of a bottomless pool just outside Lom. “Delilah” by Plain White Tees (I have twin teenage daughters in the back ok!) has me immediately swinging an acute uphill left just as the Driva river draws my eye, steeply away to the right, near Oppdal…it’s a hairy moment. My favourite is the wide and wild Namsen, a boulder strewn salmon river that runs parallel to the E6 North of Grong. It is where I go when I hear John Martyn crooning “Just Now”.

Norway is awash with waters so tempting that it’s akin to entering the improbably beautiful landscapes of childhood jigsaw puzzles, or falling right into the pages of those Tight Lines catalogues that so tickled my teenage fancy.
One evening, as we travelled Route 51, heading South towards Bergen, we came to Maurvangen. We crossed a small road bridge over a pristine river cascading into a sublimely beautiful blue pool of swirling eddies and gargantuan trout. The river dropped rapidly away past a lively looking campsite, with cabins. I seized the moment.
We pulled in, took a cabin and, with obscene haste, I assembled my rods and disappeared. I spent the evening, through the long dusky hours into darkness, lost in the shadow of snow capped mountains and the depths of that pool. The clouds briskly wiped the stars from the sky, the cool breeze numbed my hands, and the sound of the waterfall slowly receded into a layer of my consciousness where it became white noise. Although I cast lure and fly a thousand times into the depths, I didn’t give the residents a moment’s trouble. It didn’t matter though, I was just happy for once, to be sharing that space with them, that moment.
Besides which, I will be back.

September 16th

Just arrived at Martin’s place when I decide to call back my mobile phone messages. It’s Jim Lawrence. “The biggest twitch of the year is happening right now in northern Kent. Everybody will be there. If you decide to go for it let me know and I will give you all the details.” I have known Martin for now possibly ninety-three seconds and I am suggesting a hare brained two-hour drive for what is apparently a Tufted Puffin. Without further ado we discuss the pros and cons of it. We were going to hopefully see a pair of Marsh Harriers at Pulborough but this is different. We chat and we peruse a road atlas not really thinking we will go for the bird. Out of curiosity, I phone Jim back and he fills us in that the bird was seen a couple of hours ago at Oare Marshes on the Swale in North Kent and then went upstream, but prediction from top birders has intimated that when the tide comes back out in the next few hours, then quite possibly the bird will come out with it.

Looks like it’s a couple of pages drive, which is always the best way for me to discern distance. Martin then states that the A26 should do us for a lot of the route. Without ever specifically agreeing that we are off to Kent, we find ourselves heading back up the road I have just come down, and with Martin navigating we traverse the South of England on an adventure together.

After a couple of hours of getting to know each other and discovering much common ground to chat about, we find ourselves in the land of the oast house. We phone for directions and with Jim guiding us in, as we still have a distance left to run, we finally arrive in awe at Oare Marshes just after 3. There are a lot of cars banked up on the verges of this normally quiet nature reserve, and a field has been opened specifically for extra parking. It is windy, cold and exhilarating.

We march towards the crowd of people and the bank of optics pointed out to sea and we find Jim hunkered down out of the wind with all eyes trained on the Swale in front of us. It transpires that the bird had been seen for only fifteen minutes this morning and apparently only seen by seven people. But the glitterati of the UK bird world are at hand for the occasion. What makes this unusual is that the Tufted Puffin is a Pacific bird that is way off course. One had been sighted in 1994 in Sweden but this is a first for Britain. That is why the top birders are here. It is an atmosphere of communion, a gathering of a tribe all of whom are partaking in the witnessing of a new moment of bird history even though the Puffin has not reappeared. It is a mark of respect to the stranger’s appearance on the UK’s shores. It feels like an “I was there moment” without the pay off of seeing the bird. But for Martin and myself it is an experience.

We decide to have a wander round the site as there are many other not so rare birds for us to see, and just as we are about to take off Jim points out an Arctic Skua in the distance. Jim does this by the way, by watching dots and knowing the jizz of these fast moving dots. I struggle to pick them up with my bins but then latch on to the bird, which is a fine sight. We move on, knowing that if Tufty the Puffin appears Jim will no doubt phone me and call us back immediately. We wander in the voracious wind, watching birds, including greenshank, godwits and whimbrel, and eating blackberries. It is one of those simple moments in time where everything else is meaningless. The phone never rings to announce the puffin’s return and at about 5.30 we wander back to Jim and the crew. The mood has changed from the hushed reverence we left earlier to a more social climate with old friends making the most of their free time to catch up with each other, swap notes and discover what has appeared in their respective bird worlds. At least we have seen the water that a few hours before carried a small, displaced tourist who had booked the wrong trip for his holiday. The crowd, realising that the imminent re-appearance is now no longer imminent, starts to disperse and make its way home. But this has been a special day when we were invited into a very special club and make no mistake this is a club, and thanks to Jim we have met a lot of the very best men in the business. We wish them well.

I discover new warmth for this group, and a wave of anger courses through me against those people who constantly take the piss out of twitchers. Who has actually got it right? Is it the people who throw stones from their materialistic worlds, laughing at these birders who go out in all weathers, watching and enjoying the feathered, infrequent visitors that turn up on our shores? Or is it the very people, who are so often sneered at, who sit happily in the middle of nature seeking out and taking delight in its’ surprises. And let’s not forget, most people who twitch probably only do it a few times a year. The rest of the time they can usually be found at their local patches like an everyday birder, recording and logging their sightings. I have spent more time communing with nature since I started this project than I probably have in the last ten years, and you know what it’s bloody marvellous. Ok, some of these twitchers go to extraordinary lengths to see a rare bird and travel great distances just for a glimpse of a rarity, but so what? Each to their own, and nature’s much better for you than a crack pipe! Just the idea of hanging out in nature is something a lot more people should try. It just may make a difference to their outlook on life.

(Further reading: Independent article)