I have driven the A628 on many occasions in the past. For those regularly use this route will know that it passes through some of the most beautiful and stark countryside in England.
Last Friday, myself and Shane Calton decided to have a day at Arnfield Fishery which is located near to Tintwistle on the edge of the Peak District. Because I wasn't driving, I was able to get a good look at the surrounding countryside. What struck me was that this area is a veritable lakeland of water, high altitude reservoirs that are home to many wild brown trout.
Now don't start getting excited because on the vast majority of these waters, angling is prohibited. Why I am not quite sure.
Certainly the opening up of these lakes to well controlled and regulated fly fishing would help create wealth and jobs in this area. And why fly fishing? simply because these waters are perfect for it.
Why, on one of them there were big trout swirling and rising on the water.
But what do you think? Should such wonderful waters be opened up as trout fisheries?
Ron if you'd done some checking before you put this post up, you'd have found that Bottoms Reservoirs, which are the one you are talking about, were run 30 years ago as fly waters by the Nation owned Northwest Water. And your beloved Thatcher sold the WAs to her mates at a knockdown prices. The waters were closed by said mates, as stocking them eroded their profits, weren't part of the core business to rip off the the enforced punters that don't have free market to shop around. United Utilities who now own them have the wost record for customer care of any of the the Water cos in the UK.
Further to this, they closed another 15 reservoirs down completely. In two cases they sold the land for development for houses. Not long after the axe had fell on these resers, they then started moaning that because of the dry winter and summer they didn't have enough water in the system to service the needs of the punters, brought in a hosepipe ban and threatened the said punters with stand pipes if they didn't reduce water usage.
Now when those resers were built they were built to service the needs of the NW populous, and the then heavy industry it had, that was a huge consumer of water.
In sort the Manchester Corporation Water Works and others knew what they were doing and the quantities they would need over the next 200 years. BTW the population of the NW shrank from the late 70s to the 00s the water usage though went up.
But Thatcher's mates closed reser???????? Doh!
They have also tried unsuccessfully, on a number of now closed resers to get landfilling rights, another very lucrative money spinner, akin to drug dealing profits because there's no hole left in the whole of the northwest.
In attempting to do this, it never occurred to them that many of the resers were built in the headwaters of the many of rivers in the NW. All they saw was a printing money machine and big bonuses for the CEO, upper minions and shareholders.
So Ron whilst you were swanning about SA praising Thatcher, here mates were destroying trout fishing in the uplands and the NW reservoir infrastructure.
The moral of this of history lesson is, understand the facts before you start gobbing off!
Oh and BTW they also have big roach, perch and pike in them, so why should they be the preserve of the fly fishers only????
To slime yes there is a bus stop right outside the entrence. You can get a bus that will take you eastwards to Sheffield or westwards via Glossop to Manchester. :0)
There use to be a train stop as well, but they shut the line down in the late 70s, and put huge steel doors on the Woodhead Tunnel. Interestingly the tracks was still there in the 90s and shows signs of usage. The locals reconed they stored nukes or something in the tunnel, but it was always denied. And the trains they saw using it? It was claimed by Govt were ran up the line to make sure it was still serviceable just in case they ever wanted to reopen it.
