A turn in The River is not always a happy one!

If you have been following this blog then you will know that I started work on a project with the working title of The River towards the end of 2012.

During the last couple of months I have made numerous trips to the river that is the subject of the project.  These have been really enjoyable trips mainly because not only is the river very appealing but for the most eastern of its course it is in a beautiful location.

I was becoming aware that I was focusing too much attention on this one stretch of river and for the project to be a success then it was time to consider other locations.  Therefore, I paid a visit to a short stretch that runs through the Waterside area of Colne.

The first thing that I noticed was a contrast and I thought it was one that would really spoil the project.  The amount of rubbish and waste that was thrown in the river was unbelievable.  I was honestly shocked.

I really don't know why I should have been.  I have spent most of life working around or studying rivers.  I have seen the best and the worse and generally, Lancashire rivers have vastly improved from when I was a kid and even more greatly improved in the last ten years.


After a lot of thought I realised why it had shocked me.  It wasn't the fact that there was litter and rubbish in the river, it was the fact that actually I was only around a mile and half away from the stretch that I had been working on.  Two miles from where two becks meet to form the river and roughly three miles from its source high up on the moorlands.  It was the fact that in that really short span of river, humans had left a massive mark on it and not one that is positive.

I think the three images here sort of bring home the impact.  There were taken in less than one hundred yards of each other.

So the question is this; armed with this knowledge how do I make this work in a project that was supposed to be uplifting?

I found this a really difficult question to answer and I came to the following conclusion.  This has to be told as it is.

Why?

Well, if I don't tell it as it is then the whole project will be a lie.  True, I could just focus on the pretty bits but anyone wanting to visit the location after seeing my work would be seriously disappointed.  With this in mind there will be a short section devoted to this particular stretch and it will show the river as it is.

In fairness, it wasn't all doom and gloom.  I came across James P. Sullivan from Monsters Inc which made me smile.  The something amazed me.  Bobbing about this stretch of river looking for food was a Dipper.  Despite being in the centre of a busy town, despite the rubbish it was here; it was pretty close to me and I still didn't bag me a Dipper!

As for the pretty stretch of river, I am going to return there.  I have to.  I want some wildlife to come in to this project and there is plenty there and plenty of places I can get close enough to film and photograph.  In addition I will continue to travel further west to where the river meets Pendle Water and I will continue further east to the source of the river, and to follow the becks that feed it.

I just hope that as I travel further west the conditions improve and that I have seen the worse that the River has to offer.