Our current Chair of Trustees, Wendy Robinson, has set herself an interesting challenge - to walk the length of the River Aire, taking a photograph every mile and chatting to people she meets along the way.
Here she explains some of the thinking behind this challenge.
You can follow her journey in the blogs at the bottom of this page. Enjoy!
I have decided to photograph the length of the River Aire. To do this, I take inspiration from Yan Wang Preston who photographed the length of the Yangtze from its source in the Tibetan Plateau all the way to where the Yangtze meets the sea. Hearing her speak about her journey, I reflected on my own local and home river, the River Aire and realised, with some shame, that I had no idea where the River Aire actually goes. Or where it begins, even. I knew it travels from left to right on the map and ends up somewhere near Hull. I consider photographing the whole length a necessary education.
The Yangtse is 6200 or so kilometres long which breaks down nicely for a photographer’s project photographing at strict 100km intervals. The Aire is 146km long but for this sort of project, measuring in miles makes the job a lot easier at a mere 91 miles. One mile between photos seems fair to the project and to me. Fair? Well, doable with a plan and some resolve.
Asking around where I should begin, opinions vary. There are several ways of thinking about a river’s source.
First there is the Geographical Source, much loved by records books. This is the point where a river’s water can be measured furthest inland from its mouth. It might be meltwater from a glacier, a hillside spring or patch of soggy ground where molecules coalesce into a thin trickle.
The furthest such point for the River Aire appears to be above Malham Tarn and on the 1st of May this year I went to look for it. The longest measured stream was bone dry so I explored round the Tarn. I followed a damp stream bed and at its head was a muddy but wet pond. It is the sort of beginning that arouses controversy and already, friends and colleagues have offered alternative views but I feel committed to this muddy hole.
My Mile Zero whose water flows into Malham Tarn.
One problem is that Malham Tarn’s outflow disappears underground at the Sink Holes (image to left). Gone. Poof! Not to be seen again and it is only in recent years that dye tracing has confirmed where the water next comes to daylight. The waters appear to be channelled and split differently depending on how much rainfall enters the system. It does not resurge in one single place but through springs along the valley below.
Looking back on the heavy rain of Boxing Day 2015 I am reminded that for a few hours, the sink holes were overwhelmed and the Tarn’s beck overflowed directly to and over Malham Cove. In past times, this has all been one continuous stream and can be again.
Then there’s an Iconic Source. Malham Cove. This is where many Yorkshire Folk will, without thinking, tell you that the River Aire begins. It truly is an impressive sight: a 300-foot-high cliff inhabited by peregrine falcons, painted by Turner and where the Samaritans have posted signs.
Even in drought, a stream of clear water issues from a slim crack at the foot of the Cove. This lively little stream is called Malham Beck.
Another, useful way of looking at the issue of what is a river’s source, is the idea of Headwaters. This is the idea that there is no single point source and is about thinking that the uplands are boggy, wet places where water gathers and joins into streams. It is a delicate and often disrupted relationship between land and water. Still, hydrologists and ecologists consider the uplands and watercourses to be parts of a single whole system. For me, the term Headwaters comfortably expresses the dynamic complexity of how a river is born.
Then there is the Mapped Source, where Malham and Gordale Beck meet at Aire Head and a multitude of springs emerge from crevices in the limestone to contribute to the flow. Here, the River Aire is first named on the Ordnance Survey map.
On the map, the area is marked with a blue star indicating a place of interest although there is little to mark it on the ground. It is just as special as Malham Cove in its own understated way.
The last type of source here is the Poetic Source and I will give Simon Armitage the last words.
It is all one chase.
Trace it back the source
might be nothing more than a teardrop
squeezed from a Curlew’s eye,
from Beck
