Charlotte Hitchmough
- Jonathan Compton
Jonathan Compton came to our meeting this week to tell us about his experiences at the Rotary Youth Leadership (RYLA) course near Monmouth this year. He described his challenging exercises with groups of other young people of his age and older working together to improve their self confidence and leadership skills. He thanked Marlborough Rotary Club for funding his course and said, “RYLA really helped me to organise myself and the element of reflection was very important”
Charlotte Hitcmough gave a fascinating illustrated talk about the work of Action for the River Kennet (ARK). She told us that our river is one of 121 chalk streams in the UK but almost unique in the Northern Hemisphere. We learned the importance of the plant Ranunculus as an indicator of cool, clear fast moving water and its gradual loss due to lower flows as a result of extraction.
Charlotte also told us how the water meadows used to be maintained by a man called a ‘drowner’ who maintained the wet meadows to warm up the ground, irrigate it, and fertilise it with the added silt deposit to provide an ‘early bite’ for grazing cattle in the spring.
ARK are working now to improve the River and its meadows using Belted Galloway cattle and by carrying out ecology counts and surveys. The problems and possible solutions to extraction were discussed.
For more information about ARK go to www.riverkennet.org
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