By Blake Ludwig
In early 2022 I signed up for a course and learned how to kayak properly with the Newbury Canoe Club. I had enjoyed open canoeing as a teenager, adventuring for weeks down the Colorado River with our local YMCA and later my Boy Scout troop. More recently whilst hiking along the cliffs surrounding Solva Harbour in South Wales and watching the kayakers way down below I had fallen in love with the idea of sea kayaking and exploring caves and beaches along the coast. This desire became clearer when we vacationed in a cabin perched above Branscombe Beach in Devon and spotted a group of kayakers camping on the pebble beach below, building campfires and putting up their tents.
Around Newbury where I live we have many chalk streams that I would stop and admire while out on walks and I could feel myself naively pining for the freedom to float along these pristine waterways and observe nature from the water’s perspective.
Once I had officially qualified at the NCC I was able to venture out on my own from the club’s boathouse along the canal. After a long day working on my feet, paddling was a welcome relief from cheffing at the nearby cafe.
In the springtime the birds were out in the trees along the riverbank and the mayfly hatch was a joy to observe, as they are poetically described as angels arising from the surface (and the trout jumping from below); in summer evenings when I could be out later, a turquoise and orange kingfisher would occasionally fly along the bank leading me back towards town. In autumn the leaf colours turn and I could spot magnificent crimson-red climbing ivy draped over trees and hanging above the water’s surface.
Often it would take me some time to become reacquainted with my boat and then settling into a peaceful rhythm as I paddled up and down the canal taking in all that surrounded me, which is often a light spiritual experience. I love to sometimes just stop and let the current take me along while listening to the birdsong.
This year, 2024, we have had an extraordinary amount of rainfall, raising the rivers and flood plains and affecting an increased rate of flow on the canal. I realised I had to be selective when I went out. Sometime this summer – maybe it was in July – I think we had a break from the bad weather and it was sunny so I headed out downstream. It takes a couple of portages from the boathouse before we get to a part of canal that isn’t surrounded by industrial estates or barge boats so I sought a long stretch heading towards Thatcham. After carrying my boat around the swing bridge at Bulls Lock I put in and headed downstream.
After passing beneath the steel GWR railway bridge I remember noticing it was suddenly very boggy. There had been the usual clouds of flies hovering above the sunlit stretches of water but suddenly I was paddling through swarms. I must have had to paddle 4-5 mins before the clouds of flies cleared and again I was enjoying the comfort of the water. At Widmead Lock I turned about and saddled up to the edge of the canal for a brief rest before heading back upstream. Again after the big weir the water was increasingly covered in flies. I thought it strange. The whole surface was covered in them buzzing around, not just the sunny spots, and also the smell was off. It was dank and not healthy. I hadn’t worn my sunglasses so I had to keep my eyes open and resist swatting them away with my hands and risk falling in. After minutes of this again the water cleared up and the flies diminished.
I was a bit rattled. Far from having a meditative paddle I was concerned and anxious.
I knew a couple winters ago some sheep had drowned in the canal so I wondered if something had died. But once I spoke to some fellow paddlers I realised the Thames Water sewage treatment station was close to where I had been, and I began to put it together.
I made sure to wash my boat off thoroughly and I also showered well and washed my hair. It had been in the news after the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race that crew members had become sick from exceptional levels of water born E coli bacteria in the Thames.
I hadn’t experienced this level of pollution before. It’s easy to dismiss the occasional report of sewage being released into the river-ways as a result of all the flooding we’ve had in the UK. But it’s another to actually experience the deathly stench of dead water covered in flies and to realise this is what we are doing to our rivers and streams all around the country. It’s not natural. Our treatment stations shouldn’t be sending this kind of waste into our commons, not at the rate they have been doing.
I suspect for most of us it’s a case of ‘out of sight out of mind”, but It should be a wake up call. For sometime now I’ve started to think about what I put down our drains, such as when I clean a paint brush. It’s becoming more vital to make the connection about where our waste water actually goes and how it’s being processed. But now it’s all floating around us. Villages north of Newbury had their high streets littered with raw sewage erupting up through the manholes during the height of the rainfall this year. Tributaries of the River Wye are now environmentally dead, choked by so much pollution from the agricultural runoff, and closer to home the River Pang, romanticised in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, is now dying from phosphate pollution and raw sewage discharges.
We’re literally shitting on our environment. I’m sure there are other comparisons to make to plastic waste and air pollution.
So while my paddle colleagues make light of my experience that day, insisting the high rate of river flow dilutes most of the waste water safely, I think, what on earth are we doing to our natural world? Of course nature has the amazing capacity to heal herself, if we let her. But we are injecting the world with our manmade poisons at such a rate that at some point She likely won’t be able to cope.
I’m long overdue for another paddle. I’ve been off the water far too long, since it became colder with the onset of Autumn, the dwindling light and the rain. The water ever more draws me back. I’ll have to layer up a bit, and steel myself if I do happen to tip in. But the leaves are falling and it is a gorgeous time to be on the water now. The canal boats in their moorings look so inviting with their small wooden fires burning inside to keep them warm, the smell of smoke wafting in the air. And at dusk, their lights lining the water are like a fairy dream or nostalgic Christmas scene, cheery and inviting.
It’s Halloween this week. Some of my canoe colleagues are organising a paddle dressed in costume this Sunday evening. Some will become witches in black pointed hats perched on their SUP’s while others will be in plastics slalom boats; I’ll be in a Canadian canoe. I’m not sure what to dress as, though I’ve considered a water sprite, spirit of the waterways.
The original post and lots more from Blake can be found here.