blog

Ribble Rivers Trust Blog

  • This Christmas keep our sewers clear!
    This Christmas keep our sewers clear!

    This festive season we’re asking people across the UK to help keep our rivers and beaches clean by making sure all their leftover cooking fats and oils are put in the bin rather than poured down the sink. If leftover fat from cooking the Christmas dinner goes down the sink, even with hot water and washing…

  • Work experience by Abigail Naylor, Clitheroe Royal Grammar School Sixth Form
    Work experience by Abigail Naylor, Clitheroe Royal Grammar School Sixth Form

    Work experience with the Trust Monday When I arrived, I was introduced to the team members and I was shown around the building. After a health and safety brief by Emily, I was given some leaflets and information about the trust and what they do within the catchment. I then visited Bashall Brook with Adam and…

  • Guided Bat Walk
    Guided Bat Walk

  • Work experience, by Marco Dobson

    From the basis of wanting to do an enjoyable and interesting work experience, I contacted the Ribble Rivers Trust (RRT). Through one week of working among the people here at the RRT, I have learnt so much like fish ID, invertebrate ID, knowledge of land, tree ID, erosion defence techniques and much much more. The…

  • Angling- recreation on our rivers

    When thinking of sport, not everyone will think of angling however, it is one of the most popular sports in the UK. The fishing industry is worth over £3 billion per year, with over 100,000 weekly participants and over 4,000,000 people having been fishing in the past 2 years. Coarse fishing is the most popular…

  • Reconnecting the Darwen Sub-Catchment

    Hoghton Bottoms Weir is the largest of many on the River Darwen that create a barrier to fish movement. Structures like this are a problem for fish, like brown trout and salmon, that migrate downstream to find suitable food sources before returning to their spawning grounds in the smaller stretches upstream to mate. Fish use…

  • The River Darwen

    The River Darwen begins on the South Pennine Moors. It then flows through a valley of Carboniferous rocks, including limestone, Millstone Grit, shales and coal, to meet the River Ribble in Preston. The River Darwen has one of the most impressive gorges in Lancashire, known as Hoghton Bottoms. The bedrock is largely covered by glacial…

  • Work experience; helping students relate their learning to real world scenarios

    Work experience By Dan McGibbon As a third year Geography student at university,gaining work experience has become a must for progressing from a student to someone who is in full time work. The Ribble Rivers Trust was kind enough to offer me some work experience and it’s somewhere I highly recommend if considering for a…

  • The One Show
    The One Show

    We were delighted to have seen Ribble Rivers Trust featured on this week’s The One Show, talking about water quality testing and solutions to some of the most common pollution problems with our rivers. Shown on Monday 4th March 2019, the programme detailed how Ribble Rivers Trust had found issues with high levels of phosphates…

  • Christmas Tree Collections- update
    Christmas Tree Collections- update

    UPDATE: Our Christmas tree collection scheme has been a huge success this year with hundreds of Christmas trees collected. These trees will be used in our brash bundling work, where they will provide  support and stability to eroding river banks, helping us to limit river erosion and build river banks back up.   We’d like to…

  • Call of Nature campaign appeals for septic tank maintenance checks on World Toilet Day
    Call of Nature campaign appeals for septic tank maintenance checks on World Toilet Day

    World Toilet Day is a UN initiative taking place on Sunday 19th November with the aim to improve global sanitation. Although the majority of the North West waste water is safely treated through the United Utilities network risks to local rivers and seas are still prevalent through privately maintained waste water treatment works. The Call of…

  • Only leave paw prints and foot prints in the sand…
    Only leave paw prints and foot prints in the sand…

    Hundreds of bags of dog poo have been found on the UK’s beaches according to the Marine Conservations Society’s 2016 research; with 792 bags recorded at 364 beaches by volunteers over the Great British Beach Clean weekend in September last year. However these numbers don’t show the full scale of the problem; beach clean volunteers…

  • Fish Fridays
    Fish Fridays

    Throughout this summer’s electrofishing season, we’ve been giving people the chance to come along and help us with our surveys. Like many of the activities that the Trust take part in electrofishing captures the attention of all our audiences, from fishermen to conservationists to students. Naturally the opportunity to take part in this exciting task…

  • Please #binit4beaches this summer
    Please #binit4beaches this summer

    If you’re planning on visiting one of the UK’s hundreds of designated bathing water beaches this year you might be shocked to find a wet wipe buried in the sand next to your picnic spot. It’s unlikely that these wipes have been left here as litter; millions of wipes are discarded or wrongly flushed down…

  • GIS Mapping Student Placement
    GIS Mapping Student Placement

    By Kat Rowland: GIS Intern As a Geography student who loves rivers and GIS (and is doing her dissertation on both), the Rivers Trust was the perfect place for me to do a summer internship! Staying at the Slaidburn Youth Hostel, I worked in the Clitheroe office for three weeks. I immediately realised that the Trust…

  • Himalayan Balsam Bash

    On Saturday 22nd July, nine fantastic volunteers braved the pouring rain to help Ribble Rivers Trust in their annual battle with the Himalayan balsam growing along Wigglesworth Beck. The ‘Balsam Bash’, as it’s known, involved pulling up the Himalayan balsam, to prevent it from setting seed and spreading further along the beck and throughout the…

  • Ribble Life Together – The Launch
    Ribble Life Together – The Launch

    The Ribble Life Together project is officially underway! Last week’s project launch event at Brockholes Nature Reserve was a huge success! The event celebrated securing £1.6 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund with a fun-filled, activity packed day which was supported by catchment partners and staff. We’ve been developing the Ribble Life Together project for…

  • Rivers in the Classroom (and as classrooms!)
    Rivers in the Classroom (and as classrooms!)

    Sat with a year 6 group watching sand martins return to the river’s eroded bank, swooping around picking freshly hatched riverflies from the air. One girl leans to her friend to say “I could watch these all day. I’m going to come down here at the weekend.” At that moment, a huge grin spread across…