Photo-a-Day  (Tuesday, 7th January, 2025)

Good picture but looks like an ecological disaster, don’t know what Greenpeace would make of it.

Give it a few weeks and it will be busting with life and new growth.

Looks like a battle ground in winter. Makes me shiver looking at it.

Hard to believe but looking out of the window just now it’s snowing heavy again. That’s three days on the trot.
When the thaw sets in I imagine those upper reaches will once again be under water.

Looks a bit like my back garden that does. My idea about gardening at this time of year is to close the curtains and pretend it’s not there.

Burst into life it may do but not the kind of variety I remember in the 1950’s.
The photo was taken looking upstream from the bridge as you walk down from the Plantation Gates. There used to be Marsh Marigolds and other wetland plants carpeting the banks and water voles. The slopes to the right were covered in Bluebells and I always reference to this area as Bluebell Wood.
Downstream all the way to Coppull Lane there were patches of reed beds in dank water amongst which dragonflies buzzed and pools of water with frog and newts.
I cannot imagine any of those would ever survive and spring back to life.
I would say less if that dam was effective but there is still regular flooding around Newtown.

Very funny DTease, it’s always good to keep things light hearted. It gave us both a real chuckle.

Don’t walk down there at night, the only life likely to burst out is The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

As wife of Noah, this is a sight all too familiar to our family.
Please don’t keep reminding us, it was not a good time.
I said to Noah when off loading those smelly animals, if this is what we come home to absolutely no more pets taken on holiday and never, ever mention a forty day cruise to me ever again.

Bet it stinks with all the petrol and oil in the water

My gardening in Winter is watching Monty striding about in his corduroy pants and wellies Dtease …..you are not alone.

Can folk go bog snorkelling in yon swamp?

The recent harsh weather has also kept the small boat landings down so far this year. Only one containing sixty one irregular migrants in the last seven days.

Naamah, what a struggle it must have been with all those suitcases and two sons at loggerheads with each other. Is Cain out of prison yet?
Whilst you’re on, how did you get those two Giraffes on board and through the door? It has always puzzled me.

Just to cheer you WW folks up a bit, here on the East Coast it may be a bit frosty & cold but the sun is shining brightly.

Apologies implicating your family in that dreadful crime Naamah, I was getting you confused with other lot, Adam and Eve.
Talk about a dysfunctional family, they take the biscuit.

I read that Noah was 500 years old when his wife had the first of three sons. No mean task for them to go on and repopulate the world, it must have been exhausting.

Never a truer word spoken, or in this case written Colin. The natural habitats on the river banking of both sides of that bridge has changed for the worse over the years and not by natural occurrence, but by meddling folk playing around altering the way the river naturally ran.
I too remember the blankets of white wood anemones along the banking, and yes masses of yellow marsh marigolds and the wild garlic too, carpeting the once marshy areas where the river naturally flooded in winter, all adding to the wonderful aroma of Spring, this altered course of the river and also the dam means that now with very different conditions these plants no longer grow around there in profusion.

Cyril, nothing changed. In spring, you will still see your blankets of white wood anemones, yellow marsh marigolds, and wild garlic.
The only thing that's changed since you went for a walk down there is that there are more dogs than ever being walked and gangs of council house motorbiking riding kids.

Inevitable is a most dreadful word ! The more you spit at it , it just never seems to land !

I’m fully aware that ‘magic’ mushrooms can be found close by the canal near Arley golf club ‘ e ‘ , but I’d imagined that they would have been out of season just now … obviously I’m mistaken .

You may also see other changes Cyril .

To the extreme left of this photograph and just out of shot , you may see the yellow flower of the Western American Skunk cabbage .
( Google it )
A non native invasive species that’s presumably found its way out of someone’s garden , or some garden centre or other , and is rampant along Scottish streams (apparently ) according to DEFRA .

That’s if it’s visible amongst the acres of Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed that appear to have the upper hand along the Duggie … balsam in particular .

That is good to know Mick, a friendly lick and a woof every couple of yards.
Though sadly I doubt the diverse wildlife that was so prevalent there still being around Mick, I only hope that nature is allowed to revert back somehow as to how it once was, though if folks are on scrambler bikes around there; then there's no chance.
Looking in the distance of Colin's photo there is or was, a bend where the river deposited a sandy stretch which almost resembled a beach, and in the trees on the opposite bank sat Kingfishers, patiently waiting for any fish that wandered into the sandy shallows, then with a flash of blue and orange in the blink of an eye; one had got one and away to feast.

Further along up an incline to where the old railway track ran and which was then a footpath, you could get to where the industrial units are and then onto Leyland Mill Lane, but that was all blocked off behind the cottages.

It looks like the Everglades. Beware of Aligators.