The Project has visitors!

Mr Warren Slaney recently visited the Erewash........

We’ve all done it. Driving down the motorway we see a bridge coming up in the distance. Perhaps it’s a river bridge…and a sign confirms its name. As you cross over it you sit up in your seat and flash glances while keeping your eyes on the road in front as your family rolls its eyes in unison. Between Junctions 25 and 26 on the M1on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire is a bridge, a sign and a river called the Erewash. The bit you we see as you speed past has been fitted into a straightjacket by the Civil Engineers but further upstream and down this little river now has friends. Dennis has very kindly offered to show me around and one Sunday morning in June we found ourselves walking down a busy road on the way to the river. Breaking left we are immediately in a flood plane with the river up in front defined as a twisting double row of willow, poplar and thorn. Steep banks and a meandering channel would have my Geography teacher ticking the lower river box and she would be right. This is a coarse fish zone and to confirm this my guide points out half a dozen chub who see us high up on the bank and turn their black tails downstream. What is interesting is that the group who now look after this river are all fly fishermen with a wish to one day see trout amongst the coarse fish. The gleaming beds of ranunculus are interspersed with ribbon weed and there isn’t too much algae so there is hope.Around the corner comes a thick set spaniel followed by a beagle followed by Mick. We shake hands and my questions pour out; I want to know more. Mick does his best to answer me by drawing on the hours, months and years of walking this stretch. If this group had titles Mick’s would be a do’er. He proudly explains what it used to be like, before all the hard work started and shows me the results of their labour. From what I gather the river here and there was blocked almost completely by urban rubbish in the form of barrels, pallets; well you name it. Now lets get one thing straight, this isn’t chalk stream but it does have advantages. The local EA, once they realised that these men were serious, came and tested the water because the top boundary is defined by a sewage farm. The local Wildlife Trust is on board and they are coming to see how they can help. When someone takes the trouble to do something quite often their enthusiasm is infectious.A female sanitary product hangs from a branch well up in a riverside tree telling me use the high water to dump the ‘rags’ they are paid and trusted to dispose of properly. I’m not allowed to muse for long as someone spots a pink pelvic fin that’s attached to a golden flank, with a forked tail and head with whiskers. Three more barbel hang below a submerged willow tree leading us to discuss large woody debris and cover. The group have control of a tributary and a piece of upper river with a history of trout so this could be a good mixed fishery to pay back the hard work dished out. One thing is for sure these men aren’t ‘fly-by-nights’ with a short term aim of piling in the stock browns, they want to do it right, to build from the bottom, up. They have the long term health of the river in mind. As we walk back to the car, under the M1 with its wonderful graffiti on the walls, it occurs to me that there must be a hundreds of miles of river like this with thousands of fishermen just waiting to get stuck in. The Erewash Restoration Project could be a blueprint for maximising the potential of any river, anywhere, rather than turned their backs and saying it can’t be done. No pressure Lads!One thing is for sure, if I was a small brown trout, a barbel, chub, perch or water vole I would be healthier and better off thanks to this group.