After heavy rain on saturday I phoned the EA Rivercall hotline (at 60p a minute or something) to check the level of the river Wear. It told me that at 6:00am on Sunday morning the river at Stanhope (upper reaches) was at 0.28m and steady and at Chester-le-Street (lower reaches) was at 0.34m and steady. Since this was just about perfect conditions for the lower Wear, with no reason to expect it to rise significantly, and it was also a lovely mild day, I couldn't wait to get to the river.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find the river at around 6ft up and p#ssing through, chocolate brown with tree trunks flying past!!!!! This is the second time this has happened to me in recent weeks.
I don't really mind paying through the nose for a phonecall if it prevents me from wasting a trip or better still tells me that conditions are perfect for fishing. But when they are clearly making this data up (or more likely passing off the last available reading as up-to-the-minute data) I can't help getting the urge to drag a senior EA official down to river, throw him in and watch him fight for his life in the biblical floodwater. Given the monsoon tendancies of the current British climate we have to rely on these morons - if we can't use their information to plan a fishing trip, I feel heartily sorry for the poor b#ggers who are trying to save their property and/or their lives from flooding.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find the river at around 6ft up and p#ssing through, chocolate brown with tree trunks flying past!!!!! This is the second time this has happened to me in recent weeks.
I don't really mind paying through the nose for a phonecall if it prevents me from wasting a trip or better still tells me that conditions are perfect for fishing. But when they are clearly making this data up (or more likely passing off the last available reading as up-to-the-minute data) I can't help getting the urge to drag a senior EA official down to river, throw him in and watch him fight for his life in the biblical floodwater. Given the monsoon tendancies of the current British climate we have to rely on these morons - if we can't use their information to plan a fishing trip, I feel heartily sorry for the poor b#ggers who are trying to save their property and/or their lives from flooding.
