I'm feeling a little sore this morning.  Since the weather is so perfect I went up to Cam Beck yesterday morning to do a bit of running maintenance at the project site. All the work we did during the spring is still in good nick, but some of the tree stakes have been broken by the floods over the wet summer and by sheep which have entered the buffer strip via a broken wall down by the foot bridge.  I spent an hour and a half speed walling and made a reasonable job of gapping the 9ft length which had collapsed.  The next 4ft or so upstream really needs taking down and rebuilding to make the wall secure, but that will have to wait for another day.  I replaced all the broken stakes and checked the young trees all the way up the fenced strip.  Despite some attention from the sheep only three or four out of the 300 I planted have gone to that great compost heap in the sky and there is good growth on all the species, especially the alders.

There was a good hatch of what looked to me to be autumn duns by the river as I worked in the warm sunshine and these were dancing in the shafts of sunlight a good 20 yards from the river.  I walked back to the Tarn down stream past the island and Drain Mires and was struck again by the thought that this stretch of river really should be the next we attempt to fence.  There is a wide uncultivated strip along the east bank  and a fence here would allow the planting of  a few specimen trees to fill the long gaps between the existing willows and let the bankside vegetation flourish although there are a lot of the cabbage like plants here that make walking the bank from the footbridge up to Cam Beck such a challenge.

Water levels this morning are far too low for salmon, but the Tarn should fish well as it's currently not quite so bright as yesterday.  Returns for last week reveal that good catches were made and my records show that there are around 400 fish still resident of the 700 we have stocked this season.  

Ian