For urban fly-fishers exploring the edgelands of our towns and cities, graffiti is a common sight. Old brick arches, hard concrete river banks and derelict factory walls offer almost everything a spraycan kid could ask for: an endless blank(ish) canvas, and plenty of slightly sinister seclusion to wait for the muse to strike. Still, not everyone […]
Archive for the tag 'Urban regeneration'
April 29 2016
Film night: Thanks from the Wandle!
When you’ve spent a decade (or more) steadily working away at mending the headwaters of an urban river… … you end up with lots of friends to thank. So the team at the Wandle Trust (now grown up into the South East Rivers Trust) made this video to celebrate the upper Wandle project’s success at […]
April 6 2016
UK River Prize 2016: Wandle wins urban category
Here at Urbantrout, it’s no secret that the River Wandle is very close to our hearts (in fact it’s right across the road from where we’re tapping out this blog post in the depths of south London). So it’s been quite a buzz to hear that the Wandle Trust’s work on the Carshalton arm of […]
December 8 2015
Urban river futures: Deconstructing Desmond
As large swathes of Scotland and northern England start the mopping-up process after Storm Desmond ripped through the British Isles over the weekend, some frankly terrifying photos have continued to emerge, showing a whole new side to some of our best-loved urban rivers. It’s one of those clichés of environmental consciousness that we all live […]
July 15 2015
Urbantrout welcomes the launch of Rewilding Britain
This morning saw the official launch of a new national charity, Rewilding Britain, with an only slightly ambitious mission statement that includes… … mass restoration of ecosystems in Britain, on land and at sea, reversing the decline in nature so that living systems and our sense of wonder can thrive. Some might argue that the […]
July 11 2015
Urban river restoration: Manchester’s River Irwell makes headlines in the Telegraph
If you’ve followed this blog for any time at all, you’ll have no doubt about how much we love Manchester’s mighty Irwell system and its big wild trout. So we’ve been truly stoked to see that awesome urban river getting full attention from this weekend’s Telegraph… … complete with a namecheck for Trout in Dirty […]
July 1 2015
Urban fly-fishing report: River Aa, Ouve-Wirquin
Thanks to our good friend Jeremy Lucas, the Urbantrout team has been out on the road again… this time exploring some of the chalkstreams of northern France. One of these was the River Aa: a ruisseau craie that rises at Bourges on the high chalk plateau of the Artois region, and flows broadly north east […]
June 5 2015
Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing: £5.00 special offer for environmental groups
Invasive non-native species (INNS) tend to thrive most vigorously in places where human impacts are greatest. And that, of course, often means city river corridors and other edgelands where urban river restorationists and fly-fishers like to ply our trade. Now balsam (and floating pennywort, rhododendron, mink, signal crayfish etc…) bashing season is here again, Merlin […]
March 22 2015
Film night: Saving huchen from hydropower
Protecting the River Mur‘s rare population of huchen (Europe’s very own relict taimen or landlocked salmon) from the threat of hydropower in the heart of Graz, Austria’s second biggest city? Our only question is this… Why wouldn’t you? As you’d expect, the Fish Where You Live idea of local people valuing and protecting their urban […]
October 13 2014
Pic of the day: At the sign of the Slammin’ Salmon
Time was when any self-respecting retail establishment advertised its wares with a fully three-dimensional sign hanging from its frontage or occupying the street outside. Those days are now mostly gone (though it’s worth noting that the Flyfishers’ Club boasts a life-size wooden mannequin of a 19th-century angler in its collections, and sometimes uses that vintage […]
