Tuesday was quite busy but nothing exciting, catching up on correspondence and paperwork, as well as more grant applications. If you haven’t guessed we need all the money we can get! It is so hard in the current climate to raise funds from anywhere, and it seems everyone is asking. But we will soldier on trying to keep the schemes and improvements going.

Wednesday I was told our website was now complete to the point of photos. So Stephen and I spent the best part of a day sorting and choosing photos for the Website, it started out quite fun but soon became tedious. However in the next couple of weeks we hope you will get to see them and enjoy them. We will then be asking for people to send us in pictures of our Catchment and the wildlife within. I also finally got round to writing my report for the RFCA annual publication. There is always so much to do and when the weathers good the last thing we want to do is spend the time in the office!

Thursday I spent a very enjoyable day kick sampling with Mike Harding in and around the Settle area, we had some mixed results, some perhaps the result of low level pollution, but others more likely to be the result of poor habitat, the result of heavy scouring by turbulent water from the Foss, Locks Weir and Town Weir. It was very informative and I think there were some surprises for both myself and Mike! Thursday evening was the very enjoyable Falkus evening, with good Stories about Falkus and a funny performance from Phil Cool. The short video from the Hodder Consultative was very interesting and I advise anyone who gets the chance to watch it.

Friday we went down to Bezza Brook project site to measure up for our elver mats. The weather was glorious and surroundings better. But the high light was whilst turning over stones we found several eels…. and a Lamprey. I’m fairly certain it was a River Lamprey, as it was nearly 30cms in Length, not really big enough for a Sea Lamprey I believe, but to big for a Brook Lamprey. To be certain you need to inspect the teeth, which is hard to do with a live specimen, so we took some pictures and left it in peace!