November 2006 - Canoeist Magazine

Brighton 3 - the small print
Following on from the Brighton University proposals for
negotiating access discussed in the editorial we show you what they
proposed in detail for the four rivers.
River Mersey
This should have been and was the easiest agreement of the four,
28km between Stockport and Carrington. Until recently it was too
polluted for fish life although it is getting cleaner. Its banks are mostly
owned by local authorities so it could be asked why public servants
were preventing public use in the first place.
One of the main problems reported is a lack of interest by canoeists.
Brighton University cannot understand why canoeists are not wanting
to paddle this polluted flat water in droves. These are the same people
who told the Government in an earlier report that there was little
unmet demand for access to rivers for canoeing.
New launching platform, information board and portage notice
on the Waveney at Bungay.
River Waveney
Claimed as 33km of new water, it is actually a rehash of the 48km of
the 2001 agreement which allowed unrestricted use. There is little
mention of that previous work by local canoeists in this report and only
the briefest of references to all the launch platforms installed. The
previous agreement has been the only recent attempt at a full source to
sea agreement on any river in England or Wales, as apart from bits of
river, and it would have been useful to have seen some analysis of the
strengths and weaknesses of an agreement which attempted to do what
EA portage point notice at Ellingham. It is a 3km walk
downstream to permitted tidal Broads water.
this report says is the way forward. That work may have been
inadequate, according to Professor Neil Ravenscroft, but it fooled
canoeists and it fooled the EU, who funded it.
The river is extensively used around Bungay, where a new canoeing
clubhouse has been built. Elsewhere the river has only light use. The
authors fail to say why there should be a flood of canoeists now to
disturb the anglers and wildlife when there was not under the much
freer 2001 agreement. They accept that there is no evidence that canoes
disturb otters but they fail to make reference to the Tryweryn, the most
heavily canoed and rafted site in Wales for the last 30 years, where
nature trail boards draw attention to the otters present.
Canoeists are given credit for staying away from angling contests. The
authors seem not to appreciate that angling contests are not things
which naturally appeal to canoeists and that we would rather avoid
them, other things being equal or, usually, preferable. An annual
exchange of competition dates is to be made in future, the canoeing list
being rather shorter, presumably. (At one stage we proposed publishing
the dates of angling contests nationally but the information is not held
centrally and is unduly extensive. There is no use just publishing it
locally.)
The latest agreement omits the top 15km of the river. It also omits
3km at the top of the tidal section, a legal anomaly meaning that the
right of navigation does not start until the abandoned Geldeston Lock.
The anglers claim that a tidal section from which boats are banned is
rare and valuable but the tidal range 40km inland must be minimal and
not enough to excite the fish. Most canoeists will not think of it so
much in terms of the legal ownership of each section as a river with a
gap in the middle which is
too long to portage
comfortably. When I ran
the 80km from Diss to
Breydon Water in 2001 it
was only at the bottom end
that I became aware of
significant tidal effects. The
Broads Authority, who do
encourage canoeing, have
promoted one of half a
dozen canoe hire centres on
the Waveney at Bungay,
now cut off from the
Broads. Anglers are reported
to have said that they will
pull the plug on the whole
agreement if anyone uses
this 3km middle section. It
could also be significant that
Government Ministers Barry Gardiner and Richard Coburn try their hand at canoeing at the Bungay launch.
10
CANOEIST November 2006