Where Shopping Trolley’s Go To Die

Friday got off to a shocking early start: I was watching a cute fledgling Sparrow on our back lawn chirping for a feed whilst I waited for the kettle to boil for my first cuppa. Suddenly it was caught in a bloody pincer movement between two crafty Magpies. It didn’t end well for the Sparrow. Life can be so cruel in the wild, but you normally only see it pan-out on your TV not out of your own kitchen window. This wasn’t my only shock of the day though.

With river fly fishing unlocked this week, today saw my second day wagging off work to fish. This time it was on the ‘Barnes Farm beat’ on the River Calder - part of Pendle, Burnley & District Angling Association waters in Lancashire. I was suitably socially distanced from my long-time fishing buddy come nemesis of 30-years, called ‘Kempy’. The day though was a sobering experience, as my photo attests to.

You might not think so looking at this shot of the river, but during the day I actually had three fish briefly on, although not for long enough to count. Kempy even had one beautiful Trout, landed that was possibly a Sea Trout, it was that silver-coloured. He was the undisputed victor today.

It may have been my first-ever time on this river, but to be honest, there is always a feeling of deja-vu fishing these sort of gritty, post-industrial rivers ‘Up-North’. Fish and fly life are often ironically quite healthy, but sewerage outfalls, other pollution events, ‘canalisation’ and fly tipping are the recurrent problem. For whatever reason, many people seem blind to it, and treat it as, whilst sad, almost inevitable too. I could even smell the river on stretches today. Of course its state was nowhere near as bad as during the heyday of Lancashire’s Industrial Revolution, but it is still a long way off from ever being truly healthy again. God-help any wild swimmers braving it.

Like Salmon, the collective noun for this graveyard of shopping trolley ought to be a Spawning. It looked like this was where they gathered to die. Arguably it looks like there may even be more shopping trolleys now in the upper reaches of urban rivers like the Calder, than there are actual Salmon running.