When I caught our fisherman neighbour rod-handed and sloping off towards the river one day last summer, he gifted me 10 seconds’ footage of his latest catch. There on his phone screen was soaked fur slathered over a low island of back and rump, and a large head with the white of a bulging eye like that of a startled cow. A beaver, swimming 10 minutes from my door. Seeing it for myself has been another matter. Many walks and two dusk vigils so far at the fisherman’s stance have proved fruitless. Just as elusive are the Frome river’s otters, which left a muddy stampede of pawprints in marshland once over the autumn, but, as yet, not so much as a flash of living whisker.
The leaf-fall of winter has opened up the view. While the river is more visible than before, what moves under the surface is no easier for human eyes. A fisherman casts his line for quarry he cannot see. A V-shaped wake is the only trace left by a rat making for the bank. Further into the shallows a mallard drake dips his head under. Can he see through the murk, or does he probe blind for food?
There are other unseens in this river and its capillary streams that are hard to swallow. In 2024, a new bathing spot was government-designated nine miles downstream. Even before the year was up, it was shown to have failed water quality tests, rated poor thanks to a bacterial soup of E coli and intestinal enterococci. It seems the river’s otters are chasing fish and faeces. Even the feeder streams that swell the waterway are filled with farm-fresh phosphates and nitrates from fertiliser run-off. The previous local MP professed concern then voted repeatedly against parliamentary measures to improve water quality.
Despite official inertia, there are reasons to be positive. Friends of the River Frome is an amateur group with professional heft – stuffed with ecologists, a hydrologist, a planner and a surveyor. It is they who are testing the waters here and lobbying for change. I have readily signed up to support the fight.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
