Roots and wings

All the fields around here have been cut with high yields reported, plenty of duck have found the stubble, feeding hard in the evening before flitting to water to roost. We are fortunate enough to have every species of indigenous owl within a mile of here and many make the most of easy hunting across the stubbles at night. On occasion while out rabbit shooting we have come across an obdurate owl perched on a fence post happy to take the full force of the spotlight from little more than ten yards refusing to budge, often it is us who blinks first turning the spotlight away and moving on in pursuit of bunnies, else the owl flops away to another perch. There are plenty of Roe deer about, out in the open hovering up any spilt corn, give it a couple of weeks and they will revisit the meadows to knock over my pheasant feeders in search of a free feed.

Apples abound in these parts both cookers and eaters, the senior Bramley in the garden by the river is covered with hundreds of small fruit, while the eater that resembles a Discovery twenty yards from the fishing hut has its best crop for years which has drawn most wasps in the vicinity. Plums are par for the course, and the figs are fairly good although pale when compared to the crop we saw ripening off in Corfu.

The hops that rampage across the thicket below the top shallows are beginning to brown, and misty mornings and a dew that betrays miraculous feats of web spinning by spiders in the night suggest that autumn is imminent. No trees are yet on the turn other than a Whitebeam in the garden that always seems to go early, and all bar the Cherries have had a reasonable summer, even the conker, that in recent summers has turned to rust by the end of July.

It is difficult to walk up the river or the road without hearing the squeak of a kingfisher filling their boots on the masses of minnows in the river or chasing silver fish in the pond. The phragmites is threatening to take over the pond and recent forays in the boat to trim it back a tad revealed huge numbers of roach and rudd in gin clear water, a few big bream remain and a couple of swan mussels lay in the fine silt. I returned a few hours later with my camera hoping to get a photo of the mud loving mollusc but it had shuffled off somewhere. Unaware of just how quick across the ground they can be I returned home to consult the font of all knowledge and googled “how does a swan mussel move” which threw up a video on Youtube by a german guy with too much time on his hands of a swan mussel making haste beneath the waves.

Child A returned from her ten days on a volcanic island and Child B survived Dublin, just. He is currently coughing and spluttering with some gaelic oojah, a condition he will retain in the coming weeks when he mixes with the masses at Cardiff. On the two occasions that I have fished in Ireland we have always returned with some to share amongst the neighbours, One year my brother brought back the gift of chicken pox for his classmates and subsequently his sibling during exams, and I found some form of Eire flu picked up after extensive bobbing up and down on Lough Ree in pursuit of pike in rain and wind of the eighties.

On this river, fly continue to hatch, trickles of olives through the middle of the day, and several fish have been caught. The factor of a local fishing tackle emporia visited and caught four fish in a few hours the best a fish of five pounds that I had no idea was in that part of the river. But the river remains very low, if a pair of swans shuffle their feet for five minutes upstream, the whole river turns cloudy. In May the Indian runners that occupy my employers orchard strained their necks to get at the barley on the bed of the river margins that we broadcast for their brunch. This morning they walked across a river which was too shallow to swim in to receive their provender. I won’t go on, but we need a wet winter with no new abstraction, nuff said.

Over on the Itchen the river has assumed the late season sparkle that the Dever is sadly lacking. The river is gin clear with verdant weed enjoying the light, a similar case exists on the middle Test. In times of low water it’s the tributaries and upper reaches that suffer on groundwater fed rivers, while in times of high flow the clear water is to be found in the far flung reaches as opposed to the main river. Hatches of fly have not been as prolific as last year which is a surprise, but after a murky start the short stretch which I jump in and out of is in prime condition.

At home, the lady who sleeps on my left and myself have begun to compile a bucket list of “things to do once the kids have gone” strictly sedentary stuff so far until we pass the medical, but having spent an afternoon at a christening in the company of fifty odd, most of whom were marshalling young children, we eyed them enviously while they reciprocated with equal envy at our imagined opportunities to attend various abodes and try this and experience that now our ties were reduced.

Mdme has some ideas, Otis has great expectations and eyes the sofa regularly, but myself I look forward to doing things a tad better with more time available. In peanut butter terms I have been spreading myself a bit thin in the last five years.

Child A and Child B will be back at Christmas with their chaotic ways, when we will no doubt be reminded that our standards have slipped since they last departed and could we make sure that the car is fully fuelled as they have places to be and people to see.

Other than Otis taking up space on the sofa (he has the mother of all booties) I don’t think we would have it any other way

Roots and wings, roots and wings

igas and precipitous bridges

To the current generation the word “sick” is often used to describe something that is “really good” Well this river currently assumes a reasonably sick appearance, but only in the original sense of the word.

Understandably following a hot dry summer the discharge has decreased and the river has become increasingly diminished as the summer has progressed. In the week prior to the August weed cut, the ranunculus started to die off and pull out, as I jumped in the river to thrash around with my scythe, it already looked like someone above had carried out a couple of days cutting, as dead weed hung in clumps on the weirs and shallows. The ranunculus doesn’t normally die off until after the season closes. During times of low water I would normally bar cut the lot seeking to maintain a decent level of water but the weed was not in good enough condition to maintain its place in the stream and I was left with no option but to cut back what weed remained. As a result the river is now down to its bare bones, lower than the period when water restrictions were last implemented. Four miles upstream from here at Weston Colley the river is barely running and is a foot off the bottom of the gauging station. Our bridges are decidedly precipitous and the water seems a long way down when mowing the banks with the tractor. We have barely enough water to run our stew ponds and the few fish that remain are on half rations and are not having the best time of it. The fishing in the river normally picks up in September when the river can take on a late season sparkle but la truite are reluctant to feed and most sulk and skulk. Spawning may be a few months off but currently the spawning gravels remain inaccessible to all but the weaniest fingerling and parr as the water flowing over them is barely a few inches. The fringe has been allowed to encroach as has the watercress that in some places extends half way across the channel helping to squeeze the flow, but when the first frost hits and the cress sails off downstream a trickle of water running down the centre of the channel will be all that remains.

We really need a wet winter, wetter than last year. At the start of the season I am able to make an assessment of how much water we have by the number of notches the hundred and seventy year old hatch is open on the mill house, it carries away spare water that would push the water over the banks on the main river. This April I thought we would be just about ok, with enough water to run the mill stream until the July weed cut when the hatch would be closed and all the water sent down the main river for the second half of the season which is what I would expect on a normal year. The hatch was shut after the June weed cut and the river has dropped at a remarkable rate, In recent years I have expressed my concern over the rate at which the river has dropped through the summer, it is on here somewhere, these are not rose tinted spectacles through which I peer at the past, but this river seems to drop much quicker through the summer months than ten years ago. It seems a smaller river than the one I first started looking after many years ago.

This river is crying out for water, and decent winter replenishment of the aquifers that feed it.

In 2005 the catchment abstraction management strategy for this river stated that no new abstraction from the aquifers should be considered, other than during the months December, January and February, when the aquifers should be brimful. This was a little much for some who correctly thought that the river needed all the replenishment it could get throughout all the winter months. In March of this year a review of the catchment abstraction management strategy was undertaken by command centre central and this valley received a classification that permits new applications for abstraction to be considered for six months of the year, not the three of 2005 but throughout the winter months when it is hoped a surplus will be available. There are many that would state that the chalkstreams are suffering a death by a thousand cuts, and this is just one example. Since 2005 the population in the south has increased, the amount of rain falling has decreased, yet applications for groundwater abstraction in the region will be considered over a greater part of the year.

In an era when all things new and funky are preceded with the letter “i” a fossil fuel company trading under the moniker of “igas “ have been drawing oil from below the aquifers a few miles from here. On three sites they trumpet their CBM operation as sustainable and having little impact on the environment, the process involves water, so I contacted the company and questioned them at length on their operation in the valley. It involves the retrieval of oil from coal seams deep underground and while it involves the use of water, all water used is sourced from the coal seam itself and then re-injected to the same place once the oil has been retrieved, some sites do not have the ability to re-inject the water and in such cases water is taken off site for reinjection elsewhere, if this were happening in the oil field underneath this valley I would be kicking up a fuss as it is water leaving the catchment for which it was originally intended. All three sites within a few miles from here re inject their water from whence it came. There are concerns with the process over localised drawdown of aquifers but whether that is the case here is difficult to ascertain.

The same company has identified large reserves of shale gas on several of its sites in the south, which it does not plan to currently exploit but may do in the future. Its current operation of sustainable extraction of fossil fuels should be welcomed, but can it extract its shale gas bounty from beneath this valley in a sustainable manner without impacting on the groundwater fed river above? The powers that be appear to have given them the green light to apply to use the groundwater supply during the winter months which will impact on this river and all who live, work and fish in it.

Provided I continue to look left and look right when crossing the road, my active existence, along with a diet that includes the determined and sustained consumption of red wine, tomatoes and dark chocolate should lead me to cash in my chips at a reasonable age. On days when the black dog looms, thoughts centre around warmer weather and less rain, a larger population, increased abstraction and the prospect of this river becoming unfishable during my lifetime sustained during periods of low flow by the sewage outfall at Barton Stacey. A doom laden prediction perhaps, but thirty years ago three miles upstream from here a fishing club thrived. As a student on an estate further downstream from here the fishing department would regularly deliver fish for stocking through the summer months, today any fish over half a pound would have its back out of the water.

This might sound like a case of the post holiday blues. But to quote Geoffrey Boycott (sorry) “I just say what I see” I have lost faith in those delegated to protect the chalkstream environment in recent years. This river is exceptionally low, it is lower than when water use restrictions were last in place, and I can see it with my own eyes every day. And with my conspiracy theory hat on, to allow applications for groundwater abstraction to be considered for a greater part of the year suggests that some quarters may have succumbed to government pressure over shale gas extraction and groundwater levels are now being measured with a fracking friendly ruler.

I hope I am wrong and if in the future igas apply to use groundwater to explore the possibility of exploiting shale gas beneath this valley and the groundwater is low. Someone at command centre central will ignore the "bottom line" and say that the chalkstream environment will be impacted on, the river needs every drop of water it can get, and please source your water elsewhere.

Well done to the Conservative member of Parliament for the Meon Valley for speaking up for the threat posed to chalkstreams in the south and the possible threat to groundwater supply by shale gas extraction.

He’s an angler, and not a bad one at that!

A midnight raid under a gibbous moon

Sorry about the delay in updating but have been away for a week on a Greek island with the lady who sleeps on my left, three teenagers and two twenty year olds. The travel rod that had been secretly stowed away, in what I had thought was a secret corner of my suitcase was, at some point, removed during the mad dash for the airport......... no fishing for me then?

Under a gibbous moon, ours was to be a midnight raid on the island, but first we must all pass muster as a non threat to all on board plus the aeroplane, which, following an extensive bag search, I failed to do. The machine didn’t go bing and the dog was singularly uninterested in any of my unique scents but the lady with the rubber gloves spotted something spiky amongst the tangle of leads and lenses in my camera bag which was doubling as my hand luggage. The small metal knife with an inch long blade and corkscrew that was much travelled and had already visited Portugal, Spain, France and the low countries was now deemed to be an offensive weapon, I was obviously carrying the air of an international man of mystery and the lady with the Stasi accent and rubber gloves proceeded to give me a demonstration of how I could take out the crew and down the plane in a matter of minutes, an impressive feat for which she seemed to have received extensive training.

The upshot of my attempt to smuggle arms was either to relinquish my travel corkscrew or pay £80 to put my hand luggage in the hold. Frauline took ownership of my travel corkscrew, which I hope she enjoyed and had we exchanged phone numbers and kept in touch we would have laughed at how my plans to bore holes in the carcass of the aeroplane or drill into the crew’s skull one by one, would never have got off the ground with a tool that failed to deal with the least obdurate corks. She didn’t seem to mind the Leatherman that I am convinced, with the right training, could deliver a coup to most tin pot African states. I was dragged away by teenagers, as the Stasi lady had sensed my ire and begun to stretch her rubber gloves in a deeply threatening manner.
For the record it was a Christmas present from the lady who sleeps on my left and had been to ninety nine percent of the places I have visited with my camera bag.

North West Corfu was our destination, three apartments in a quiet strung out village with super snorkelling, and some spectacular scenery. The sea was incredibly clear and a boat was hired to carry us to some of the more inaccessible coves for a sub surface shufty, the most spectacular, some caves that you could bumble about in before exiting into forty feet of water with shafts of sunlight streaking to the seabed, I felt like I had fallen into an advert for something or other. There was a bit of a swell when we were out and some of the beaches that we hoped to visit proved inaccessible and some were briefly seasick,

but returning to coves closer to home and a rugged coastline we came across several areas where the water was cooler and the sea less salty as freshwater springs spewed out into the sea. We saw the obligatory bass, bream and mullet plenty of territorial wrasse that grumpily guard their stone or crevice of first choice, one trigger fish, one octopus, some sandy looking things on the bottom that looked like a form of goby and some spectacularly marked eels. We snorkelled every day and It was one of the best places I have ever donned goggles and peered into the water below.

As always food and drink featured highly throughout our stay. Following last year’s odyssey I questioned the mystery of mythos the premium hellenic beer that at the time was unavailable in the UK. For the last six months our local supermarket has stocked the stuff and on the odd occasion when it has been cold and miserable outside I have consumed a bottle in an attempt to take me back to a sunny beach or tatty taverna. I returned home with a bottle of the Greek stuff for comparison and after scientific tests under laboratory conditions I can report that the two don’t taste the same, which leads me to suggest that Heineken are possibly banging their subsidiary beer out in a unit in Amsterdam for consumption in northern Europe.

All of our party show a keen interest in food and drink, and while we ate together a few times most days started with echoes of the “Ronays at home” and a conversation over who had eaten what and where the previous night and good points and bad points. While all of our apartments were self catering the price difference between eating out and eating in was negligible, the small supermarket seemed to have adopted “tourist” prices with even the tomatoes and fruit more expensive than the supermarkets at home. On our second night the seven of us ate a fantastic meal with a few bits to start, nubs of bread, olives, tzatziki and stuff followed by a fantastic main meal, buckets of beer, plenty of wine, dancing waiters and the smashing of plates all for one hundred Euros, needless to say we returned on our final night for an equally satisfying dining experience. The lady who sleeps on the left (the right on this holiday...it’s good to try new things when away) consulted Trip Advisor and were not disappointed with a gourmet meal on the beach, Greg and Rick would term it FINE DINING! in their shouty way, several courses, grown up wine, fancy nibbles and free liquor at the close, all for fifty zobs. There were failures, and for the first time our Trip Advisor method failed with a visit to the restaurant in Bronze medal position, which must be maintained by favourable reviews from family and friends. A bar two hundred yards from our abode has spectacular views across the bay and some stunning snorkelling at the bottom of a short flight of steps and for the price of a beer we whiled away an afternoon taking in the scenery while soaking up some rays, and were about to partake of some food when a sixty year old man with pony tail clad in nothing more than a string posing pouch with a zip at the front strutted into view, mdme’s order of spaghetti was immediately withdrawn and I eschewed the local sausage dish. A fantastic bar in desperate need of a dress code or at the very least a sign reading GRANDAD, PLEASE KEEP YOUR SHORTS ON.

The young found a suitable bar that emitted the requisite bleeps and twerts that passes as music for this generation, one that I confidently predict will be described in years to come as void of melody, or rationed at the very least. Mdme and myself attended the establishment one afternoon in the name of snorkelling from the rocks on which it stood, After half an hour spying fish I returned to Mdme who guarded camp and on my return was being questioned by the Slovenian DJ as to whether she would be interested in entering a Wet T Shirt competition, which if nothing else seemed a little “retro” so we exited stage left. Needless to say teenagers attended the establishment most afternoons to take in the tunes and dive from the precarious perches high up on the cliffs into forty feet of water. Brits abroad were few and far between, most of the young were Greek, Slovenian or Italian who still receive a bad reception for misdemeanours committed over the years, and the odd blinged up and seedy ageing Albanian.

A drive up into the mountains, revealed some stunning views. The Inuit people used to have a quaint custom of pushing their old folk out of the igloo onto the ice when they had passed their period of usefulness. In the hills of Corfu a similar custom exists whereby the old folk are directed to the side of the road, provided with a plastic chair and encouraged to wave dubious bottles of olive oil, homemade wine and honey at any passing vehicle. More marketing required I think, and let’s get these old folk in out of the midday sun, some of them were getting really grumpy.

A midnight flight brought us back in Blighty, where Mdme dashed straight off to work, Child A hung around for 24 hours before dashing off to a Canary Island for 10 days, Child B made 48 hours before departing for a cricket tour of Devon and then on to five days in Dublin, while I wandered up the river and wondered where all of the water had gone. Child A will arrive home for 24 hours before setting off for her final year at Portsmouth University, while Child B will begin his first year at Cardiff University, leaving the lady who sleeps on my left, myself and Otis at home alone. The cuts of meat will be considerably better and wine may be taken with each evening meal, our time will be spent in togas lazily reclining on plumped cushions occasionally popping grapes into each other’s mouths enjoying complete control of the television remote control.

So who does have a folio full of fracking shares?

I have never experienced a summer such as this for butterflies. Peacocks, red admirals, white admirals, painted ladies, frittilaries, meadow browns, ringlets millions of moths and much more besides. The few acres of fen that we fire each winter is thick with hemp agrimony which is the place to be if you are flutterby on a hot afternoon, with the loostrife in the fringe an alternative venue for a chinwag over a jug of nectar. In perfect growing conditions the phragmites has attained a height unseen in these parts for some years, eight feet or more around the pond, and the few acres of meadow that I have to top once the orchids have finished their piece was undertaken on my tractor two gears lower than last year due to the dense growth. No sign of ash or oak die back in these parts, and the alders that we have been asked to keep an eye on for a decade or more are in particularly rude health. The conkers have their canker but not to the extent of previous years when they have had burnt leaves in June, and the cricket bat willows look full of runs, however, the few cherry trees about the place look a little down in the dumps.

August fishing continues in a familiar vein, with each fish put on the bank hard earned. A few more rainbows have turned up, mostly fish of between three and four pounds that probably escaped from the neighbouring “big fish” water during higher water last winter. They are in reasonable condition and I am amazed that they have been caught during this time of famine and not the feast of the Mayfly.
To be honest the river does not look great, and water quality is of particular concern. Quick to colour up following the briefest shower of rain something is going upstream of here. A change in management practice perhaps or trouble at the treatment works, but the weed in some parts of this stretch is coming off second best in its battle with ugly algae, a lot of crud is building up in the channel that will need to be shifted this winter.
Precisely twelve months ago, I took some photographs of some pound plus roach in four feet of water on the bend below the fishing hut, they are on here somewhere if you look hard enough, image rights for the roach prevent the pictures being shown for a second time, but the water is gin clear. At eight clock this morning I walked around the same bend and struggled to make out a six pound pike lying mid water on the same bend (the roach had understandably scarpered) Water quality remains an issue unaddressed on this river.


At home our crap cat has moved on from filching frogs. Our small garden pond, four feet from the kitchen window has played host to all manner of life over the years including a keeper from further down the valley on a boozy night in December. It’s an untidy piece of water but full of life because of it, and each year draws the attention of grass snakes who deem it a suitable place to deposit their young. On a hot night this week, one of our crap cats who think the presentation of the occasional crippled shrew is enough to merit a bowl full of biscuits, responded to our chidings by strolling in through the garden doors, mid news at ten, with a snake in its mouth. The lady who sleeps on my left, who was reclined and lazily accepting the grapes that I was popping into her mouth one by one was sufficiently startled as to utter a scream, crap cat dropped the baby snake and exited stage left leaving me scrabbling around under the tv for a six inch grass snake while trying to take in the weather and gauging prospects of mowing on the morrow.

Otis has acne, in human terms he may be entering his late thirties, but spots have flared up along his gums which, we are told, sixty plus pounds worth of pink pills will soon sort out, we must squeeze his spots, and bathe him daily. He’s a different dog since he lost his hooligan friend, but I am adamant that we have done spaniels.

I fear to mention fracking, the papers are full of it, and today Flashy bellowed that we must all get on with fracking in all quarters of the kingdom, A statement that counter balances those protestors in Prada who squat in lanes in the south. Reassuringly there was a statement from an unnamed minister that environmental factors must be considered with particular regard to water supply and disposal in the south, a point that was repeated by a local MP from the party in government keen on his fishing. The licence application process must be adhered to with public consultation and effective licensing by the environment agency. Concerns remain over the licensing process, the EA have proved weak in the past when faced with Big Business and the bottom line, the government have already tried to apply pressure to the EA by requesting the public consultation process on any application for exploratory fracking be reduced from three months to two weeks, the EA have stated that two weeks is too short for public consultation on a matter that has stimulated the current level of public concern. It remains to be seen who will win the day but my money’s on Dave and his piles of dosh over the EA.

How about some transparency over who has a folder full of fracking shares?

Coincidently, I am polishing this off while listening to England win the Ashes in Durham, a perfect spot for shale gas exploration according to those with a fetish for the feel of a foot in the mouth.
Anyway, three nil up with one game to go, and all achieved with a side firing on few cylinders. Ten tests on the bounce against significantly weaker opposition could hamper the development of this England side. Is it too late to seek stronger alternative opposition this winter? New Zealand perhaps? or possibly Bangladesh?

The parable of The Simpsons, series 4, episode 12

Well the weather broke and we have experienced some incredibly intense showers with gutters struggling to cope and water running down the sides of the lane, but the river has hardly responded bar a generally fresher feel and a tinge of colour. This past week has seen two of the biggest fish of the year put on the bank, the first a fish of four pound, was taken on the surface in the middle of the afternoon with the mercury moving well past the thirty mark. The second a fish of six pound was taken on a Caddis nymph around lunch time, both fish had been in the river at least two years or more and were in superb condition, it’s surprising that they made their mistake in the middle of the day having got their eye in over a few seasons, the cricketing equivalent of slapping a full toss to midwicket when well into three figures.
The river is stuffed with minnows, the shallow streams through the garden the deep glides on the bends, the shallows in front of the hut all play host to thousands of the things. The Kingfishers nesting at the top of the river are filling their boots and the young are now fledged and feeding hard on a menu of minnows, although a pond full of silver fish fry provides an alternative meal.
The Millstream is now shut off with all water pushing down the main river to maintain a decent flow, heavily weeded in its lower stretches it sits like a pond but still plays host to fish and quite a few duck have taken advantage of its thick fringe that will now be left for the remainder of the season.
Over on the Itchen an Otter has been about, the signs are there in the fringe along with a few half eaten fish on the bank and tell tale spraints, there are also several broods of Pheasant who occasionally break cover from thick fen to scamper along the cut paths, particularly if I am approaching with my strimmer. Now that the Orchids have finished I am setting about topping the water meadows, a few weeks later than normal which means it is a steady old job.

Oh frack it!

Most of my mental energy is consumed by all things shale gas at the moment. Questions on the phone, emails offering text for perusal, even a call from TV for a quote. The Government (who I did vote for, so it’s my own fault) have gone into overdrive with the pro fracking message, the country will slip back into recession if we do not frack and everyone who signs up can have free lollipops and oodles of cash, have we forgotten the parable of the Simpsons, season four episode 12, and how long before some local government splurges the fracking bunce on a monorail?

Picture the scene:

A nuclear family of Mum, Dad and two point four children sit down for tea in the middle of the week, on two point four chairs to eat four point four pork chops, with vegetables various and some bisto gravy.

Dad: Sit still son, and stop wobbling the table

Child A: it’s not me Dad it’s my sister.

Child B: Not me, we did deportment at school today, I is still!

Dad: You may have done deportment but your grammar isn’t the best, I am still

Child B: Whatever,

Dad: It must be you 0.4, can you sit still please?

Child 0.4: I’m doing my best, but I’ve barely got two legs on this 0.4 of a chair so it’s going to wobble a bit

Mum: You silly beggars, it’ll be them frackers, now eat your chops, we’re going on the monorail later.

Anyone who protests is an ideological extremist, but the line peddled by oil companies and government is almost as extreme.

The answer, must lie somewhere on middle ground, Professional protestors in Prada bring nothing to the party, and neither does the government line that fracking is the panacea to all energy problems and let the lights shine forever. Shale gas may have helped turn the American economy around but they have a little more space and water than we do and the impact will not be felt as acutely as over here. There is a price to pay for the extraction of shale gas, an environmental trade off that few on high will acknowledge. Fracking on this crowded island is a far riskier operation, particularly with regard to precious groundwater supply and environmental impact, the seismic activity I could live with, anytime the earth moves at this stage of life is a welcome event.

Currently we are all being urged to “think of the money” and how posh our plasmas could be when we start pulling gas out from the shale but just over a year ago this corner of England was in a drought, there was not enough water to go around, and we were all warned that the situation was only likely to get worse in the decades to come,particularly in the south east so start using your water wisely.

Fracking is a thirsty business and water abstracted for fracking is, for those interested in the bottom line, the equivalent of living off your capital. It’s withdrawn from the ground, spent on fracking and that’s it gone; waste water that cannot be treated or returned from whence it came, so the rivers and all that live in them miss out. Just over a year ago this river was down to its bare bones (these photos were taken in April 2012) it was rescued by record summer rainfall, if that record rainfall had not fallen and Frackers were fracking freely in this valley pulling water from the ground, we would have been hosting a TV programme titled “Fish rescue”

I have written to my local MP expressing concern over the source of water plus a few others with interests in fishing. To date only one has replied. The others, all in government (that I voted for, I know, I know) have, a month or more later, yet to reply: But then why should they respond to the ravings of an addled crank worried about the river upon which he works?
.
Two years ago, water supply to the South East of England was a key issue; we were all encouraged to become more water wise. The extraction of shale gas is not water wise, if we are to waste water in this way, the H2O needs to be sourced from somewhere where it is abundant, and then a little thought given as to where it is disposed off, because where the aquatic environment is concerned it is not the most agreeable liquid.

Constant banging on about the possible economic benefits of fracking with a disregard to all else may be symptomatic of the times in which we live, but twenty years down the line, those in the south who took the fracker’s salt may be bemoaning the fact that the unit price of the water in their kettle surpasses the cost of warming the stuff up, and why does the river no longer run at the bottom of the garden?

How about a little transparency over who has a portfolio full of fracking shares?

David Gower to host Strictly

Well, where did the river go? I have a vague memory that a few years ago I expressed concern over the speed at which the river level fell following a reasonable winter of rain. It’s happening again, conditions may have been exceptional over the past fortnight with sticky heat and high temperatures, but while carrying out the July weedcut it is apparent that the river is hardly pushing through at all. There is still a taint to the water which is frustrating, although over on the Itchen the water has cleared for the first time this season.
Day time fishing has become particularly fruitless although one fish of four pound that had been skulking on a bend for a few years went silly in the sun and snatched at Klinkhammer at the hottest part of the day. Most activity occurs in the last hour of the day with fish abandoning the bottom of the river to slash at sedges. There are currently some very large grayling laying low on some of the bends, large for this river is two pound plus, and I am confident that several will be caught when we start sub surface fishing at the end of the month. There are also grayling fry on the shallows by the ford in the millstream which is a popular site for “the lady of the stream” to kick up her redd if a little hazardous in the traffic. Fewer shoals of roach are in evidence, although there are some large solitary fish well in excess of two pound, that are immaculate and unmarked. Hatches of fly in the past few weeks have been fairly good, Olives and BWO if not pour of the water, hatch regularly and the evening has seen some reasonable falls of spinners. There seem to be plenty of duck about, when the river is falling it pays not to be too tidy with the fringe and the marginal growth, allowing it to creep out into the river squeezes what flow remains and keeps the weed and gravel in reasonable order and reduces the settling of suspended solids, the ducks have enjoyed this extra cover, plus a Waterrail that flushed from cover on the middle bends when Otis’s made investigations as to the identity of the bird that his nose had betrayed. Away from the river, we have never had a year like it for butterflies and bees, reports in the press suggest that they are having a hard time of it of late, but that is certainly not the case around here. The water meadows that I would normally top in late June have been left a little longer because the orchids were late to put in an appearance, a few strides through the long grass shifts a plethora of butterflies while the bees buzz contentedly on the verdant fen that is now a riot of colour. I will have to top the meadows in a few weeks once the orchid seed has set, but the fringe will be in full flower by then and Loostrife, monkey flower and much more besides will provide an equal attraction.

Disaster occurred on the Kennet recently when organo phosphates leaked into the stream and did for most of the invertebrates in ten miles of the stream, the use of the particular organo phosphate is banned in many countries, an appalling incident occurred in India recently where school dinners were cooked in mustard oil contaminated with such chemicals wiping out an entire class. Anglers have been advised to wash their hands and not consume any of their catch, all that feed on aquatic invertebrates, mostly fish and birds, will go hungry for quite some while and the aquatic environment will be impacted upon. The pollution incident came to light, not through government agency testing, but through Invertebrate “kick sampling” by interested angling bodies on the river. A long, long time ago when I was a hungry student on the middle river, one of our regular stocking trips was to Frensham Fly Fishers on the River Wey. Always on a Saturday morning, many members would turn out to assist with the stocking, before taking us to the pub on the green for a ploughmans and pint (a welcome meal for a starving student) where I would earwig the headkeeper for who I worked, in discussion with Dr Cyril Bennet, Frensham Fly fishing club member who expressed concern over the decline of the Blue Winged Olive. Dr Bennet went on to develop a method of assessing aquatic invertebrate populations by means of a simple and inexpensive kick sample. A few minutes of shuffling around in the river with a fine net followed by a visual assessment of beasties caught and in what numbers. Dr Bennet and his team secured funding for equipment to be given to interested parties, encouragement was given by Governement Agencies and for many years Dr Bennet and his gang held workshops to demonstrate the technique and dish out free sampling equipment. I attended a refresher course with Dr Bennet a few years ago and briefly shared a petri dish with Jeremey Paxman which was a bit of a worry at the end when questions were called for.

The serious pollution incident on the Kennet came to light through the kick sampling developed by Dr Bennet and his team. Gammarus Pulex, the freshwater shrimp, are the first to cash in their chips should anything nasty enter the waterway, a typical kick sample on a chalkstream will turn over hundreds of the wee beasties, an angler who fished here a few days ago, carried out one of the kick samples that raised the alarm, his sample showed one groggy Gammarus. Once the alarm was raised Government agencies acted fast, and the publicity machine moved into action, with furrowed brows very much to the fore when “action” was called, but without Dr Bennet’s kick sampling, this “invisible pollution” event may have gone unnoticed. I don’t know the fella, I was just the lad on the trailer netting out the fish years ago, but Dr Bennet received a thoroughly deserved MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.

left to the Blue Winged Olives, they’d have made him a Saint.

The Angling Trust, an independant body formed to take cohesive action on behalf of all forms of angling , achieved considerable success following pressure put on command centre central to address the burgeoning population of inland cormorants. Flying in the face of an IFM report that suggested that cormorants were ok, the Angling Trust have secured a catchment by catchment deal that will asses local populations of cormorants and issue predator licences accordingly, a sensible modification to the current beaurocatic licensing system. If you are not a member, get on and join. The Angling Trust are doing good things.

The future of lights and power is fracking, the message is writ large everyday by loons in power who have been sold the story of a friendly source of gas. Those who object are deemed idealogical weird beards and yurt dwellers. Myself, a seething mass of testosterone, who laughs in the face of tofu and granola, want to know where the water is coming from because it will impact on the river that I have looked after for lots of my life. I can take the seismic activity, at this age it may provide a welcome jump start, but am uneasy by the oily sales pitch from on high that promises hundreds of thousands of pounds to local communities who agree to frack. Today for the first time, concern was raised in the papers about the sourcing and disposal of water in the south east, I am too modest to say...

ok I’m not

here’s the link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/10189331/Water-firms-raise-fears-over-shale-gas-fracking.html


you heard it here first, an unlikely alliance with the water companies, but if it helps preserve this river I’d do the spoons with Genghis Khan.

With Child B occasionally in residence, cricket still takes up a large part of our life, a recent Sunday friendly in the Bourne Valley featured an unjust early dismissal for yours truly resulting in a tour of a nearby lake, eutrophic and spewing its guts into the precious river below, which didn’t ease my mood. Above the outfall of the nutrient rich lake where hundreds of ducks and geese are fed daily by joe public, the river ran clear, below the outfall filamentous algae abound. It’s a no brainer, online lakes in the upper reaches of this river system need proper management plans to prevent their impacting on the river below.

Cricket again, Andrew Strauss is causing concern in this household, his summary during play is the equivalent of “Say what you see” Alan Shearer on Match of the Day, I have mushrooms in the fridge that could pass more pertinent comment, and recent ramblings by David Gower suggest that he has entered a delicious period of later life enlightenment. He may be the president of our cricket club, but I am not required to put a positive spin on all that he utters. Recently he has suggested that all raised in town be given countryside classes and vin rouge prescribed free on the NHS,

Hear, hear says I, (and not because he is El Presidente)

A louche Peter West?

what price David Gower the next host of Strictly Come Dancing albeit with the lights turned low and the show screened after eleven?

A plea:

This column is soon to start a petition to force supermarkets to introduce a dress code during hot weather, It is beyond belief what the cream of local town society deem suitable attire for the purchase of frozen peas on a hot saturday morning.

Please show the petition your support

A mobility scooter ride to Eutrophia

For the purposes of maintaining an acceptable pressure of blood and all things anger management I have put off chucking this piece of rubbish together for forty eight hours, in the hope that the vein on the side of my forehead would not start to pulse three paragraphs in. But first, here’s Bob with the weather.

A dry week and fishing has toughened up a touch but not to the degree that we have experienced post mayfly for some years, the odd fish will still snap at a mayfly but most have been taken on olive patterns at all times of the day, there are a few sedge about and there are fewer fish in the book with DDL written next to their name than recent seasons past. Water colour was an issue a few days after the weed cut ended, and the river still maintains a milky hue. Many have commented on it but no one has a definitive reason other than it was a heavy weed cut. On this river spring ditches that had remained dry for over two and a half years collected organic crud that was washed into the river during last winter’s flows. It may be that some of this material lay beneath weed that has now been cut and the crud is exposed to the flow. As weed grows and also when it is cut, water is pushed into areas where it wouldn’t normally flow where sediment and organic matter may have collected.

It’s just a guess,

A painful experience was averted earlier this week, while whirling around with my strimmer, plugged into appropriate music to maintain my rate of work, I inadvertently barged into a swarm of bees, a passive bunch they had massed on a branch of an apple tree and didn’t seem to mind my buzzing about them. I haven’t seen one here for a few years and normally you hear them before you see them but this lot were quiet and content and hung around for a couple of hours before pushing off..

In a further attempt to stave off my pulsing vein, I am writing this while watching a pleasant Sunday game of village cricket in bright sunshine and a gentle zephyr, flying above are a pair of Kites. Most cricket grounds in the Hampshire league currently play host to a Kite or two, they are becoming as much a part of match day as bats, bails and tea, their reintroduction over a decade ago has certainly proved successful, an electrician who fiddled with our fuse box two years back and is housed near the site of the original release said he looked skyward while picking some beans one summer and counted eleven in the air.

And that’s it, the vein is starting to pulse and I can put it off no more.

Earlier this week I was required to spend several hours mixing with the cream of town society while a man with oil on his hands and golden spanners set fire to many of my twenty pound notes in an attempt to fix our car. Wandering the high street I mused on the need for so many coffee shops and mobile phone emporia, and why do we have three mobility scooter hire shops in the Shopping centre? a Para Olympic legacy, or a direct result of the high st McDonalds closing down and moving to a "drive through" operation on the edge of town. I know for some the acquisition of their first mobility scooter can be a life changing moment, and provides valuable independence and freedom. But some people in this town are now using them as a recreational vehicle. Driving into town, parking the car and if the second “all day breakfast" is sitting a bit heavy then lets hire a mobility scooter at £3.50 an hour to tootle about town. Are we turning into a generation of daleks?

Fed up with the unsatisfactory retail experience on the high st, I wandered out of town pausing briefly to furnish the oily handed one with a fresh pile of twenty pound notes with which to stoke his fire. On the outskirts of town is a nature reserve. Previously a put and take trout fishery with small fish farm it was purchased by the borough in order that the town’s population should receive an environmental experience. There are a few hundred yards of river which has had much work carried out on it, with woody debris very much to the fore and a plethora of signs from the media and communications department informing joe public of what they are about to experience and trumpeting the return of the cormorant and otter, and then there are the lakes.

The larger of the two contains a small population of fish and the proletariat are permitted to fish, the other I am sure would reverentially be termed a “sanctuary” by a man made from muesli clad in the finest fleece and cutting edge walking shoes. It's a skip and a giggle away from eutrophia, and to compound the problem upwards of a million gallons a day of the river’s water is being pushed through it. A Eutrophic Lake is a body of nutrient rich water in which simple plants thrive, algae to be precise. On the sunny afternoon that I visited I circumnavigated the lake accompanied by the obligatory mobility scooters (one parked up, before clambering down the bank to feed some ducks) Algae covered much of the lake bed and blobbed up to the surface in the sunshine before making its way to the exit and out into the river. A few days prior to my lake visit I had been asked to accompany some anglers to a beat a few hundred yards downstream from the lake, and had been surprised to see blanket weed coming down the river and hanging up on amongst other things “woody debris”. I took the following video on my complicated phone before returning home in a half fixed car via the garage.



An email was fired off to command centre central along with the video complementing them on their stretch of river and enquiring as to why this lake had a million gallons a day of river water passing through it. I was informed that following lengthy discussion between the relevant agencies and the council over whether the lake should be kept “off line” or “ on line” it had been decided that they would plump for the latter, a decision I suggested they should revisit.

Taken “offline” the lake would have a funny few months with algae blooming and crashing but a balance would eventually be reached, we took exactly the same course of action here with the flight pond around fifteen years ago. But an offline lake would not provide the ready supply of blanket weed that was bowling on down the stream. Now this is not to say that all online lakes are bad, I can name half a dozen “online lakes” that are not eutrophic are well managed and have little effect on the river that they feed but there are many that need looking at. Apparently Alresford Pond at the top of the Itchen has its Eutrophic status listed on its SSSI citation which is bonkers, the lake in our neighbouring town is impacting on the river below and needs taking “off line” it’s a no brainer. If it was happening upstream from here on the Dever, the faeces would be flying towards the fan.

And then I read the paper,

Not a day goes by without mention of fracking in the paper. The media wing of the pro fracking lobby have given battle, we are told that the risk of possible blackouts has risen if we don’t find some fuel and the rewards for pro fracking towns will be many. Earlier this week a Government minister, a right Cnut by the sound of it, decreed that “earthquakes would not be allowed” (his precise words) well that's plate tectonics taken care of, now for the waves and tides. This weekend another MP wrote that the risks posed by fracking have been ramped up by “ideologically driven environmental activists”

that would be me then, although I’d have gone for “addled middle aged crank”

I don’t think I am the former, although I'd own up to the latter. I like electricity, and if fracking can be carried out safely and risk free then It makes sense to explore this possible source of fossil fuel, but recent events in my narrow field of life suggest that decision makers at many levels are not quite up to the job and engender little confidence that correct conclusions will be drawn from evidence presented.
I live and work in a chalkstream valley that relies on groundwater to survive, I have genuine concerns over the source of water for Fracking and its subsequent disposal once used, particularly if it takes place within a few miles of this river. If things don't go to plan, for large parts of the South of England this could be the equivalent of pissing in a fast dimishing well.
I don’t expect this MP is a fisherman or has any understanding of chalkstreams and their ground water supply but I expect he lunches a lot with the other metrosexual tit (coming to a bird table near you) who suggested that we build houses on fields that are deemed to be uninteresting, what with the Generalissimo at Command Centre Central preaching about the wrong rain and the DEFRA minister declaring that the principle purpose of water ways is to get rid of water and they must be managed as such, whatever your political persuasion, we don’t seem to be blessed with the most gifted governers on either side of our elected house at the moment,and a self appointed pay rise of ten thousand pounds per annum doesn't seem like great value for Joe Public in these austere times. It’s a hermit's life in a loin cloth in a cave for me until someone sensible comes along.

Boris the Bold perhaps? Whose huge physical strength and sharp wit always kept him one step ahead of the evil emperor in his pursuit of Mariana

I have omitted to mention the list of suggested best practice from command centre central on chalkstream management out of fear for my throbbing vein, although I may come back to it in times more peaceable.

And then there is the BBC,

One hundred and fifty senior managers who were deemed to be not providing value for money to the tax payer have been laid off, each one received an average pay off of £164,000.

Twenty five million pounds on “golden goodbyes” Well that’s value for money then.

If some of this happened in a failed state it would be condemned as corrupt.

We are increasingly led by loons!!