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THE MOST UNPROMISING of 'public footpath' signs points behind the old scouring mill. The path squeezes between a car scrapyard and the old sports equipment factory, now divided into workshops. For fifty yards there's the barking of guard dogs, the sound of saws and the smell of fresh cut timber.
The river has a natural look. Although the channel has probably been straightened on this section, the river has started to erode its bank on the far side and has deposited a shingle bar near its centre. The shingle is building slowly upstream. Most of the long thin island is now grass covered and a few young willows grow at the downstream end.
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The underlying stone is exposed at the foot of a low cliff cut in the dark silt of the bank opposite. I think this is the flaggy top of a bed of sandstone that crosses the valley here, but I know there are also quantities of gravel beneath the valley bottom fields.
The scene has elements of a natural river, such as you'd see on Speyside, Scotland. But turn around and there's a concrete and breeze block wall topped off with barbed wire and broken glass. A multi-trunked Alder and a stand of Japanese Knotweed grow by the old woollen mill, further along near the joinery shop a Crack Willow spreads its branches out over the river.