Ground Broken

March 8, 2010

An apology for those who checked for a blog entry last week to findI didn’t do one.  I was on a long weekend Holiday in Morocco.  For the First time in nearly 10 years I went on a Holiday where there was no fish, rivers, lakes or the ocean involved.  Well a confession I took the better half on a “Romantic” open top bus tour so that I could get a look at the nearest stream I could see on the map, it flows into the Oued Tensift, and although flowing was neither romantic or particularly interesting!  It was a nice Holiday and left me feeling relaxed but not re-energised as Marrakech is a fairly intense city.

So going way back into February….  Monday the 22nd was busy with a lot of the usual correspondence with the EA, Grant funders, and project stakeholders.  Nothing of particular note but all necessary stuff! 

Tuesday I dropped into Ken Varey’s and signed them up to selling our passport scheme vouchers.  This is great news for us, them and the users of the scheme who will be able to quiz their fishing department team for info and tac-tics.  I also spent some time on the online membership of the trust page which should be completed soon, and worked on my presentation for the open evening and Bowland Game Fishers Association.

Wednesday I took our contractors out to look at the A59 culverts job.  It was cold and wet, and the trout in the pool below didn’t really like our presence as a sizeable fish (I’m guessing) took a pot shot at my Wader boots!  We headed up to Langden and Dunsop in the afternoon to check on the Spawning Channels.  These were looking fantastic.  We found 6 salmon kelts including one of 32inches (A Cock fish) and 2 Sea trout kelts.

Thursday I put together the specification for the beams I needed on the A59 project, and sent this over to Cattermoles to get a quote.  In the evening I gave my presentation to Bowland Game.  It went relatively well but certainly wasn’t my best presentation, but one learns and then improves (I hope!).

Friday I worked on the Barrowford 3 fish pass project again, getting the documentation ready for putting tenders and planning applications together.  In the afternoon I dropped my dog off to the Kennels in preparation for the Holiday, and then on the way back spotted 2 huge “piles” of white foam the size of my 4×4 on a small stream.  I rang this into Fred Higham as I didn’t have time to ring the EA directly but Fred had it reported, and references numbers sent within an hour or so.  My guess is that the incident was a cross connected washing machine, and combined with rainfall equals frothy foamy becks.  How important is this?  Most detergents contain phosphates, which generally people think only come from farming, but have just as much damage.  Reducing water quality and there for invertebrates, fish andbirds that depend on the former.  Cross connections with toilets and Washing machines is one of the biggest issues coming from the general populace.  If you want to know more about Cross connections visit our Threat to the river pages.

I Had planned to be back in work on Wednesday the 3rd of March, but the weather and thus flight times had other ideas, I landed back in the UK at 1:30 and got to our Hotel in Manchester after 2:30 by the time I got home Wednesday was gone!  However I couldn’t resist switching on my phone that evening to go through messages and emails!

Thursday was catching up and getting back on top, but Stephen and I then went out to look at Padihamin the afternoon.  Ground has been broken and the project started!!!!  And to add to that we headed up to Montford straight after to look at our first project in 2010 – The removal of Montford Weir. 

 

Our Contractor was in and out in one day!  The water now flows beautifully through a pool and riffle sequence and has opened up a fantastic spawning riffle that is the rival of anything on Ribble or Hodder!

Friday Stephen and I spent the morning preparing the tree planting site at Ribchester, which he worked on with Prince Albert Association Volunteers on Sunday (getting in over 900 trees!).  In the afternoon I had a chat to Chris Heap to sort out a look at weirs on Chipping Brook, and then set about filling in our completion report for one of the Grant Funders on the Passport Scheme.

Posted by Charles Edward Poate | Filed Under General News, Grants and project management, Pictures, Restoration and Conservation Projects, Threats to the River 

Comments

One Response to “Ground Broken”

  1. Archie Ruggles-Brise (ART) on March 9th, 2010 08:39

    Jack,

    GReat to see such a dramatic improvement in the wier – amazing what can be done in a short time (not counting the consenting process…)

    A holiday without water – are you mad?:

    Archie

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