Fly-fishing, Grayling, London, Media coverage, River restoration, Trout, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers, Wandle

Writing on the Wandle: Tankred Rinder and George Monbiot get stuck into Trout in Dirty Places

Wandle fishing - Tankred Rinder, Alex Titov

The past few weeks have been busy with new project development (of which, I hope, more soon!) but I’ve also had the thrill of meeting two great and influential writers on the banks of the Wandle.

First up was Tankred Rinder, Austrian author and editor of the rapidly-growing Forelle und Aesche e-zine. Tankred fished the Wandle semi-regularly with local fly-casting instructor Alex Titov whilst living in the UK a few years ago: now based in Cologne (but travelling widely on fishy business), he’d read Trout in Dirty Places and had been inspired to write a double feature on urban fishing and river restoration for his German audience.

On the afternoon of his latest visit the Wandle was flowing high, cold and wintry… so we spent the afternoon Kaffeeklatsching in the café at Morden Hall Park instead. Tankred’s article on the Wandle has now appeared here, and his feature on urban fly-fishing is here: please do click through to read them in the original German, or let Google Translate give you the gist if your Teutonic turns of phrase, like mine, aren’t quite as fluent as they might once have been.

Secondly – and with a lot less advance planning – came the celebrated environmental writer-campaigner George Monbiot, who dropped in on the Wandle to witness the excitement of this year’s Trout in the Classroom trout fry releases.

Being personally fascinated by the edgeland blurring of boundaries that’s happening on the Wandle and urban rivers across the world, as the philosophy of the Trout in the Town movement takes hold and brings iconic wild trout back to concrete canyons where natural processes have been suspended for hundreds of years, I’m intrigued that George’s next book explores very similar territory.

In the meantime, his deeply thoughtful and moving piece about rewilding urban kids and rivers appeared last week on the Guardian website, complete with name-check for Trout in Dirty Places.  There’s a short extract over on my Urbantrout blog, and the full piece can also be found on George’s own site.

One year on, the confluences continue…

Trout in the Classroom 2013 - with George Monbiot

(First photo: Tankred Rinder / Alex Titov)