Re: Roberts Rambles 6
That's true mart, when I was a boy we used go down to the river with grappling hooks and pull out massive pieces of driftwood, one old fella made a living out of it, selling the wood to burn on the coal fires, he had it stacked up in his yard. The river stunk, and there must have been a rich cocktail of chemicals in there from the factories at Sheffield, nothing survived!
I can't remember the date but in Doncaster museum there was a massive Sturgeon several feet long that had been caught in the river down near the old International Harvesters factory, but that might have been before the river got so polluted.
So it was a complete surprise back in the 2000's as I was running over the bridge at Bramwith to see fishermen lining the bank...
After making enquiries it seems that the river was now so clean that it was able to support several species of fish. Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency have done a stirling job around here preventing flooding and cleaning up the waterways.