River mending in an urban Royal Park: installing a Downstream Defender in Richmond Park to improve water quality in south London’s Beverley Brook (Part 2 coming soon!) The River Restoration Centre visits a range of Healthy Rivers Project sites around Caerphilly in south Wales The wetter the better? Making the mental leap to treating storm […]
Archive for the tag 'Manchester'
July 17 2017
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 17 July
Team England coach Jeremy Lucas reports from this year’s IFFA River International fly-fishing competition on the Ebbw (one of the best post-industrial rivers in Wales!) News from Manchester: Mersey Basin Rivers Trust and Healthy Rivers Trust merge to form the new Mersey Rivers Trust 20 best places to enjoy London’s rewilded rivers Flash floods and […]
May 16 2017
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 15 May
Exploring ‘the drain’: David James Bendle takes a friend fishing on an Irwell tributary ‘Haunted rubble and half-vanished walls’ on the banks of Winchester’s River Itchen Tenkara in the edgelands: David West Beale gets his stalk on SERT takes out the River Club weir on the Hogsmill near Tolworth in south London The Littering Fisherman: […]
May 3 2017
Film night: Pollution hits the Irwell (again)
It’s a sickening experience to see your local river destroyed by pollution, but with the best will in the world there’s nothing very much for outside observers to say or do except sympathise deeply, offer any support that’s needed, and thank their lucky stars that it wasn’t their river… this time. That’s why we’ve been […]
March 17 2017
The Fly Fisher: Bringing urban fishing to a global lifestyle audience
Urban fly-fishing has had an underground vibe for as long as we can remember. Sure, it’s featured on plenty of blogs and charity auction listings, and even some memorable magazine interviews, as well as the book that launched a thousand urban fishing adventures, Trout in Dirty Places… … but we reckon this might be the […]
October 16 2016
More headlines from Manchester: Trout & Salmon magazine features the mighty Irwell
It’s a satisfying thought that since Trout in Dirty Places was published in 2012, the whole idea of urban fly-fishing has gone so mainstream that you can hardly pick up one of the monthly magazines without finding at least one article about what used to be our dirty little secret… The latest in this canon […]
January 11 2016
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 11 January
Cleaning up after the floods: 25 volunteers from the Mersey Basin Rivers Trust tackle debris in Bury’s Springwater Park “Flood management is more or less where medicine was in the 17th century: unscientific and irrational”: George Monbiot tackles Permanent Ineligible Features (PIFs) and farming subsidy public spending that ‘rushes rivers into our homes‘… … and […]
January 2 2016
Film night: Natural flood risk management in Stroud
As one of the warmest and wettest Decembers on record spills over into a grey and soggy January, and flood risk management in urban areas continues to polarise the national conversation… … it’s easy to feel kinda helpless in the face of epic natural disasters like the Irwell floods that recently took out the 200 […]
October 12 2015
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 12 October
Manchester’s urban river restorationist Mike Duddy wins the Wild Trout Trust’s Wild Trout Hero award 2015 The BBC goes exploring London’s unseen rivers (and how they’re still affecting parking restrictions on the borders of different boroughs!) How was #Bagmageddon for you? England’s new plastic bag tax could raise £730 million for good causes over the […]
September 25 2015
Cleaning up the Mersey Basin: Urban river cleanups for World Rivers Day 2015 and beyond
Inspired by the success of community cleanup events on urban rivers all over the UK (including the Don, Cale, Slea and Wandle), the Mersey Basin Rivers Trust has announced a new series of last-Sunday-of-the-month river cleanups across the Manchester area. Cleanups will run from 10.30am until around 2pm, and heavy gloves, hot drinks and cake […]