As I swim, a bolt of burning blue shoots above me and vanishes behind the curtains of willow foliage draped over the river’s edge. Kingfishers are common along this stretch of the Wharfe, but they are typically shy, wary birds. My sightings are often blink-and-miss-it affairs; a furtive glimpse of sci-fi cyan flashing through the trees, or knifing at prey in the brown water.
Greedy to see more of those scintillating, laser-burst colours, I decide to try to get a closer look at this particular bird. When I locate it, on a low branch overhanging the water, and carefully slide forward, I am expecting the bird to get spooked. But instead, the otherworldly hunter allows me to get astoundingly close, almost within touching distance. I can easily make out the finest details of its plumage.
The bird hops around on its perch, dips into the water below, and seems unthreatened by this strange floating head. Perhaps it doesn’t see enough of my body to register me as human. Only when a couple of people appear on the opposite bank with a dog does the bird finally take flight.
The encounter feels like a rare privilege, but not all my recent visits to this stretch of the river – a local swimming spot that has boomed in popularity – have yielded wonderful up-close encounters with wildlife. Increasingly often, I find blackened ground, vandalised trees, litter and other things to trigger fits of misanthropic anger.
Yet this is a nation where the public has a legal right of access to only 3% of inland waterways. Is it any great surprise that, when the mercury soars, particular riverside hotspots get quickly mobbed? Where else is there to go?
In other European countries, rivers and lakes are far more likely to be treated as communal assets; recreational infrastructure is even built around them. In feudal old England, inland water is still treated as the dominion of landowners, fishermen and private interests. Done properly, more aquatic access benefits both people and wildlife. And in the hot years ahead, the demand for it will grow.
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