Out and About - Winter 2021

Meet the bank manager

River keeper for the Barton Court Estate NICK RICHARDS is responsible for two and a half miles of river bank. The river is an important environmental resource and it is Nick’s role to maintain the ecological structure of the land around it. As autumn turns to winter he makes repairs and tidies up.

T he hard and messy work has how many posts I have driven into the river’s bed since the end of the trout fishing season, but I love to see the skeleton of what I am hoping to achieve over the winter begin to grow and to take on a physical form. Throughout the spring and summer these things have been germinating in my mind and the first few dozen posts of the autumn do feel strangely like the first buds to break in the spring. I can’t pretend to enjoy any day on the ‘man breaker’ or post driver, but it is the most immediate evidence of a summer full of constructive daydreaming beginning to take on a tangible form. This year will be the first full harvest of the willow that I have been pollarding and propagating for the purpose of re-invigorating the river. I am delighted with the results. I used to stumble into every month of begun and I’m loving it. I choose not to put too much thought into

the year with my eyes open and the vast baggage of aged keepers telling me ‘what has gone before’ influencing my tiny satchel of forward planning. I hope that I now march forward with more of a sense of ‘what is to come’. The predecessors of the modern river keeper have a great deal to answer for,

but had no education and an obligation to please their employers, no matter what the cost to the wellbeing of the river. We now manage for the river. I try very hard not to rant or to preach, but given the recent news headlines I think that we all need to be aware of a

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O&A WINTER 2021