This section has its own webpage now www.riverroeburn.uk
Remembering and Restoring the River Roeburn
What is the river doing now?
River levels over 2.3m are major floods usually with
trees coming down from erosion and landslides
Click for River Hindburn levels by Mealbank bridge.
Current height and hydrograph for the last 7 days.
A Series of River Roeburn photographs.
FILM - REMEMBERING and RESTORING
the River Roeburn
Friday Dec 15th 7.15 Wray Institute.
World premier film about the River Roeburn
If you missed this, we really encourage you to come to one of our future screenings and find out more about our beautiful river and how we can nurture it into the future.
You can watch a Youtube version here.
We really recommend you see this with full cinema screen. We are hoping to show it at the Dukes Cinema and/or The University of Cumbria cinema fairly soon, alongside a feature film
called High Water Common Ground.
If you would like to screen the film elsewhere please let us know.
Remembering and Restoring the River Roeburn:
29 mins, 4K, 2017
The film remembers the Wray Flood, 50 years ago, and explores how the flood impacted on the life and character of the river, and how this has changed since then. On a Community Engagement River Walk, that took place this year in May, local people such as David Kenyon, Rod Everett, Roberta Snape, Bob Marshall and Tom Howard share memories of the Wray Flood, and also of more recent floods. These memories create a vivid picture in the film, alongside historical photographs.
By remembering the flood, and exploring its impact, we can see the need for Flood Management techniques and practices to protect against future flooding. Sarah Littlefield from the 'Lune Rivers Trust' talks in the film about the value of Natural Flood Management Techniques such as those in place at Backsbottom Farm. The film discusses how these techniques have been used to great success in other places throughout the country and abroad, and explores in detail how they are impacting on the local area. These 'Slow the Flow' practices include check dams, swales, in river training and restoration of blanket bog.
The film finishes with the Artist in Residence at Middlewood Trust, Richard Shilling, discussing his experience of the River Roeburn. We also see how local people today, both children and adults, are enjoying the River, and how it is is a vital part of local life.
The film was produced by Bryony Rogers and Mark Minard of Moving Essence Productions for the Middlewood Trust, with support from Heritage Lottery Fund
over the Summer and Autumn 2017.
We welcome you to show this film elsewhere.
Please contact us. Rod and Bryony.
River Roeburn Talk and discussion by Rod Everett Nov 2017 at Halton Mill.
Click to listen to the talk
Click to listen to the talk
Farmers workshop - Natural flood Management 19 Oct 2017
Natural Flood Management Farmers meeting on 19th October 2017 visiting the slow the flow demonstration on Backsbottom Farm to see check dams, swales and blanket bog restoration and discuss mob grazing and keyline subsoiling. Early in the day we had brief presentations from Lune Rivers Trust, Environment Agency, Natural England and the Abbeystead estate. A morning of lively discussion with 20 participants. Thanks to Sandra Silk from the Forest of Bowland AONB for organising this.
River Roeburn
Remembering and Restoring Festival
Sat 12th -Sun 13th August 2017
We had a wonderful weekend with over 150 visitors.
Many thanks for all the volunteer help, musicians singers and everyone who contributed to its success
This Free Festival celebrated and remembered 50 years since the Wray flood on 8th August 1967
and helped to engage the local community and general public about the issues around flooding and water management.
Remembering and Restoring Festival
Sat 12th -Sun 13th August 2017
We had a wonderful weekend with over 150 visitors.
Many thanks for all the volunteer help, musicians singers and everyone who contributed to its success
This Free Festival celebrated and remembered 50 years since the Wray flood on 8th August 1967
and helped to engage the local community and general public about the issues around flooding and water management.
Natural Land sculpture workshops.
"Resident environmental artists Richard Shilling and Julia Chick regularly make natural art sculptures from materials gathered near the river. Learn how to make natural sculptures yourself and send some quality time next to the enigmatic River Roeburn. For future workshops see Richard Shilling Facebook
Richard Shilling Land Art 'Maelstrom'Made at Middlewood, Roeburndale, Lancashire on 2nd September 2016.
It's been one of those days. Not one where Pink Floyd cut me into litle pieces but one of shared ideas and new projects.
As I drifted in and out of sleep early this morning I had a semi-lucid dream which repeated three times. With closed eyes I willed myself to see a tunnel and as I did so it twisted into a vortex and as my body followed it, it became the outside world that spun and the vortex that was still. My attention fluctuated between wakefulness and REM sleep and I conjured up the tunnel vortex another two times. Aware that I was willing it to happen but not aware that I was dreaming it until I was fully awake.
The last time I had visited the Fairy Pool at Middlewood was before the winter floods. Last autumn it looked like it had done for the previous 5 or 6 years I had visited it but now it was transformed.
All my recent visits to Middlewood had all been to other places but today I wanted to go there spurred on by thoughts of vortices, whirlpools and maelstroms.
I had always found it an intense place to work, such a lot of movement and sound, the white noise of the rushing river seemingly dancing with hidden voices and shouts. If ever a place was a vortex this was it. Instilling a feeling of taut excitement inside but one that draws energy from you and within which you can only spend so long.
And now through its transformation it combined both the familiar and the intensely new. Slabs of rock unmoved and in place and the same life blood of movement and rushing water. And yet the banks had been gouged leaving massed tendrils of tree roots squirming on the sand and piles of river stones exposed beneath trees of fifty years age and more.
A large spur sat in the middle and when stood on it I could see the majesty of the river much wider than it had been before. All its power and presence was writ large, sculpting for eternity through the wooded gorge.
Where the two tributaries joined at the end of the spur great gluts of foam, like king-size whirling souffles danced around the whirlpool, never escaping but sometimes joining hands in a threesome and twirling round and around. During our visit there they'd grown from loaf size to car wheel size but continued their merry dance in the whirlpool for all those hours we'd witnessed them.
An emotional place felt even more so when the combination of the majesty of mother nature combined with the power of somewhere you knew, that you had communed with many times before and yet everything was changed.
Head spinning, water spinning, everything in a circle. Caught in a maelstrom and spat out.
I didn't have lots of time to make this so kept it simple but the moments spent stretch out to fill the gaps all the same.
Half way through its creation I had a deeply spiritual experience, another vision deep inside my mind. An apparition of Pete Burns stood there in front of me and the words 'You spin me round round, baby right round' whirled around the ether. Once made real they would not shift from my consciousness, not until I was away from the Maelstrom and walking back along the path.
My vision for the sculpture was much more turbulent but it emerged calmer and succinct. Definitely one of those days.
Lune Valley Voices N'Dodo
It's been one of those days. Not one where Pink Floyd cut me into litle pieces but one of shared ideas and new projects.
As I drifted in and out of sleep early this morning I had a semi-lucid dream which repeated three times. With closed eyes I willed myself to see a tunnel and as I did so it twisted into a vortex and as my body followed it, it became the outside world that spun and the vortex that was still. My attention fluctuated between wakefulness and REM sleep and I conjured up the tunnel vortex another two times. Aware that I was willing it to happen but not aware that I was dreaming it until I was fully awake.
The last time I had visited the Fairy Pool at Middlewood was before the winter floods. Last autumn it looked like it had done for the previous 5 or 6 years I had visited it but now it was transformed.
All my recent visits to Middlewood had all been to other places but today I wanted to go there spurred on by thoughts of vortices, whirlpools and maelstroms.
I had always found it an intense place to work, such a lot of movement and sound, the white noise of the rushing river seemingly dancing with hidden voices and shouts. If ever a place was a vortex this was it. Instilling a feeling of taut excitement inside but one that draws energy from you and within which you can only spend so long.
And now through its transformation it combined both the familiar and the intensely new. Slabs of rock unmoved and in place and the same life blood of movement and rushing water. And yet the banks had been gouged leaving massed tendrils of tree roots squirming on the sand and piles of river stones exposed beneath trees of fifty years age and more.
A large spur sat in the middle and when stood on it I could see the majesty of the river much wider than it had been before. All its power and presence was writ large, sculpting for eternity through the wooded gorge.
Where the two tributaries joined at the end of the spur great gluts of foam, like king-size whirling souffles danced around the whirlpool, never escaping but sometimes joining hands in a threesome and twirling round and around. During our visit there they'd grown from loaf size to car wheel size but continued their merry dance in the whirlpool for all those hours we'd witnessed them.
An emotional place felt even more so when the combination of the majesty of mother nature combined with the power of somewhere you knew, that you had communed with many times before and yet everything was changed.
Head spinning, water spinning, everything in a circle. Caught in a maelstrom and spat out.
I didn't have lots of time to make this so kept it simple but the moments spent stretch out to fill the gaps all the same.
Half way through its creation I had a deeply spiritual experience, another vision deep inside my mind. An apparition of Pete Burns stood there in front of me and the words 'You spin me round round, baby right round' whirled around the ether. Once made real they would not shift from my consciousness, not until I was away from the Maelstrom and walking back along the path.
My vision for the sculpture was much more turbulent but it emerged calmer and succinct. Definitely one of those days.
Lune Valley Voices N'Dodo
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River Poetry
Ode to the Roeburn
Your pleasant glades and babbling course helped shape my early life
Our courses set without regret seeing turbulence and strife
You calmly flow but most don’t know the gift that you have been
With twists and turns forgotten like the things that we have seen
Your harnessed strength brought riches once along your flowing course
But in just one day unfettered you showed your might and force
We all forgive what you once did as you raged without control
But will you forgive what we do now as we erode your very soul
I hoped one day I would return to see you again old friend
Your sustenance to life around I thought could never end
With grateful thanks for rewards bestowed to generations gone by
Let the children now protect you and never let you die.
Robert W Marshall
Childhood resident of Wray
Slow The Flow - Check Dams and In River Training
Demonstration area
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RIVERS SHARING CIRCLE
13 August 2017
Links for Natural Flood Management
Environment Agency evidence for NFM https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-with-natural-processes-to-reduce-flood-risk
Natural Flood Management farmers guide from Yorkshire Dales
The New Water Revolution from Slovacia lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uVE9lPD4s
The New Water Paradigm Lecture by Michal Kravick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCEB9VAcssg
http://www.ludiaavoda.sk/data/files/44_kravcik-after-us-the-desert-and-the-deluge.pdf
Recent film about Natural Flood Management around the UK http://www.highwaterfilm.co.uk/common-ground/
The upward spiral on erosion process. A film showing how small actions can heal erosion- My edited version https://youtu.be/s8qmJNn-S08
Work around Stroud with Rural Sustainable Drainage. Some good films www.stroud.gov.uk/rsuds
Slow the Flow Calderdale slowtheflow.net/
Environment Agency evidence for NFM https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-with-natural-processes-to-reduce-flood-risk
Natural Flood Management farmers guide from Yorkshire Dales
The New Water Revolution from Slovacia lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uVE9lPD4s
The New Water Paradigm Lecture by Michal Kravick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCEB9VAcssg
http://www.ludiaavoda.sk/data/files/44_kravcik-after-us-the-desert-and-the-deluge.pdf
Recent film about Natural Flood Management around the UK http://www.highwaterfilm.co.uk/common-ground/
The upward spiral on erosion process. A film showing how small actions can heal erosion- My edited version https://youtu.be/s8qmJNn-S08
Work around Stroud with Rural Sustainable Drainage. Some good films www.stroud.gov.uk/rsuds
Slow the Flow Calderdale slowtheflow.net/
