I'm a bit late with this posting this morning as There was a fair bit of email correspondence to catch up with since we were out until late yesterday. 

It's heartening to realise that some of the things that one does for pleasure are of interest to others and spark a curiosity that was previously absent.  About a year ago I wrote an article for the Parish Newsletter about the habits of migrating salmon.  Now, on my perambulations around the village, I am regularly stopped by locals and asked when the salmon will be in the river and where's the best place to see them.  We had quite a session about this yesterday lunchtime in the Post Office.  It seems that Andrew whose wife owns the shop had been down to the Foss in the morning to try to get some pictures of salar leaping the falls.  Nothing doing. As he said it was so early they were probably still in bed. 

However, a friend of his had been to Stainforth the day before and got some classic shots of some really decent fish.  He is going to email to me the link to the website where these pictures are stored so I will post up the link when I get it.

My recent rants about DEFRA seem to have struck a chord with some and I had an email from Malcolm Byram yesterday attaching a press release from the office of his MEP which makes clear that a few senior politicians are becoming concerned about the impact on environmental management of DEFRA's increasingly desperate attempts to balance their books. What we need is a coordinated effort on this one with either a single body or leading political figure spearheading the challenge to the cuts. 

I was late in last night because we spent a fascinating evening at the October meeting of the Horton Local History Group watching a selection of films from the Yorkshire Film Archive.  Some of these were of the Dales in the middle of the last century but the Archive has nothing of Horton itself.  If any reader knows of the existence of local film material or anyone who was in the habit of filming activities in Horton we would love to know.

Finally, It's not a bad morning here with high cloud, little wind and an unseasonable warmth.  We had a lot of rain yesterday so the river is now in good form again.  Just right for salmon watching on the Foss.

Ian