This was the third time South Cumbria Rivers Trust has requested my services and this was the biggest project they have been involved in and one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. My remit, as previously, was to record the before, during and after, as the weir was removed and the River Kent was helped to return to its previous levels. The aim was to allow a natural reclamation to take place both in the river and in the immediate vicinity to increase biodiversity.
A lot of preparation took place to take care of every possible scenario, particularly in relation to potential extreme weather, but in the end the work went remarkably smoothly and the river looked like it had been waiting for this to happen and there was far less remedial work to be done than was expected.
I have a lot of footage and I may yet be asked back to get more as the riverbanks become renaturalised. Some footage has been used in other films about the work, but above is just a simple slow flight up the river past where the weir used to sit. You can see where boulders have been deposited downstream to help slow the river, but upstream the river appears to have just settled straight back in to where it used to flow.
One coincidence was that at the same time as this project I was working on a updated promotional film for James Cropper plc less than a mile down river from this weir, which was actually owned by Croppers.