A River Runs Through It

I have always lived in towns and cities with a common feature of a river running through. This must be more by destiny than on a statistical basis.

There was the lower reaches of the mighty Thames at Abingdon, the Lark through Bury St Edmunds, the natural and man-made courses of the Ancholme at Brigg and the Humber Estuary and River Hull, the latter giving its name to the short version of the otherwise grand sounding Kingston Upon Hull.

I even went away to college in another riverside town, Nottingham on the banks of the Trent. I have, at different periods in my life, paddled, swimmed, fished, boated, canoed and fallen in to these watercourses and many others and have understandably felt a great affinity to and affection for rivers and what goes on around them.

A family outing when I was young often included the thrill and excitement of approaching a hump-backed bridge in the car and that fairground feeling of losing your stomach for a few seconds over the peak before the fast run down the other side. The resounding cries of "wheeeeeeeeeee" did help with the feeling of sickness and weightlessness for that brief moment of perceived flight.

In my late teens I was often a willing passenger in a mates's car or van in an attempt to get all four wheels off the ground on a local bridge crossing and to contribute to the deep scars and ruts in the roadway from the impact of the engine sump and exhaust pipe in the tarmac.

When a young driver myself I was confronted on occasion by the impasse of vehicles on a narrow pack-horse bridge where the right of way was a matter of interpretation, good manners and consideration in favour of the most expensive or faster car first.

The increase in road traffic in terms of volume and axle weight has meant that many historic bridges and crossings have been by-passed with new, wide, flat and boring routes and in some way there has been a detachment of rivers from their previous co-existence with travellers.

A bridge over a river or stream was a place to pause and look down into the waters, throw in a stick and follow it in Pooh Bear concentration to the other side or try to catch a view of the fish or wildfowl in the eddying flow of deeper pools and backwaters.

Blinkered modern motorists may not now be aware of the presence of a watercourse as it is culverted and concealed under a roadway or hidden behind a high parapet wall. The white backed information boards with the river named on them are quickly passed with not so much as a second glance of notice or comment.

That is, of course, until a river dares to impose a threat on our regular journeys and timetables.

This was foremost in my mind last week when, after the melting of the persistent snow on top of the seasonal rainfall , the usually docile River Derwent at Kexby, on the Hull to York road was lapping eagerly upon both verges giving me the sensation of driving along a causeway with a real prospect of being overwhelmed by the turbulent waters.

The Derwent is one of those rivers that maintains a quiet existence for the majority of the year and can be reduced to a mere trickle in drought conditions but yet the residents of many of the towns it runs through have a respect and fear in equal proportions based on the intermittent risk of flooding.

The river has a surprising course from its sources on the south side of the North Yorkshire Moors down to its eventual outfall into the Ouse and out to the North Sea along the Humber. In the pre-Ice Age era the feeder streams took a direct route to the coast discharging at Scalby, north of Scarborough and at Filey to the south. The glacial deposits left after the retreat of the ice blocked the eastern exits and the immoveable force found its own way southwards.

Along its 72 miles and elevation difference of some 250 metres the river has a significant catchment of nearly 800 square miles including the high moors and the hillsides of Cleveland and Hambleton. It is invariably from this large hinterland that tremendous volumes of surface water can be produced on a seasonal basis or, under the climatic changes in more recent years attributed to global warming, in a matter of hours from deluges creating flash flood conditions.

The upland drainage streams include the poetically named Jugger Howe, Black and Troutdale Becks through the narrow Forge Valley before the flatter lowland areas are reached.  Malton, Stamford Bridge, Sutton upon Derwent and Bubwith  all suffer from  flooding on a regular basis although modern relief measures including a Sea Cut and overflow areas to fields that have been engineered and acquired to divert larger volumes from these vulnerable settlements.

Water from the Derwent is used to supply the larger regional cities including Hull and Leeds because of its good quality as well as use for irrigation, leisure and sporting activities. The Roman occupation of the area will have been influenced by the previous navigability of the Derwent and there are civil engineering works from that period to improve its military and commercial use in conjunction with the major garrison at York.

Water and Corn Mills developed along the banks of the river and entrepreneurs of the 18th Century built Canals with locks, turnpikes and further wharfs and warehouses to link in with the natural course. Maintaining an artificial water level to allow the passage of barges and vessels led to conflict with adjoining landowners who complained of more frequent overwhelming and flooding ruining their crops and livelihoods. The halcyon days of steam Railways soon took away any meaningful freight trade previously of corn downstream and with return loads of coal. The Derwent became more of a recreational river but vested interests produced legal wrangles over Rights of Navigation in the 1930's which persist to the present day.

On this weeks drive through Kexby the water level has receded slighty. In the meadow on the south side of the road the rough looking horse has been able to find dry ground after a few occasions on which I have seen it stranded, dejectedly on a small divot of land patiently waiting for a path to open up with a parting of the flood waters. The old stone bridge, now relegated to a role as a private driveway to a farmhouse, hearkens back to the days when horse drawn coaches and wagons struggled over its incline and the infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin may have paused a while to skim stones fancying his chances of catching a good prize on the York Turnpike.