Hitchin Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We profile some of these businesses and organisations regularly in a feature called 'Up Close in Hitchin' while also encouraging opinion pieces from our readers and trusted contributors.

With Hitchin's wonderful Oughtonhead Nature reserve being awarded a prestigious Green Flag for the fifth year running here's our popular columnist 'Sparky' in praise of Hitchin's hidden jewel

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Oughtonhead Wonderings

I was only about 10 years old when my brother and I walked nearly the full length of the river Oughton, from the pumping station near the source to the bridge on the Bedford Road.

It almost certainly wasn't the first time that I had been there, but it is still the earliest occasion that I can remember, several decades later.

Distance wise, at just over a mile, it was hardly a major expedition for a healthy youngster, but it still felt like a true achievement at the time.

My late dad, also a local boy, obviously knew the place from his youth and readily shared his enthusiasm with us on that day, pointing out things of interest, of which there were many.

I have been going back as often as I can ever since, taking my own children when they were younger.

There are only about 210 chalk streams in the world, with 85 per cent being here in the UK. Northern France has a few, too, and even the mighty River Somme counts as one of this number.

The pure mineral-rich water, near constant temperature and steady current make these streams a rare and precious ecosystem, supporting a veritable panoply of wildlife.

As we discussed in an earlier Sparky's View, this beloved river, together with many of the others, is under threat from a range of significant challenges nearly all man-made.

Greedy over extraction by water companies; nitrate-rich agricultural run-off, discharge of raw sewage and effluent, climate change and the attendant extremes of weather, poor environmental management and contamination by fly-tipping and littering.

They are an extremely fragile asset and it is beholden upon all of us to look after what we have, or we may lose them for ever.

"We can't continue this decimation of 85 per cent of the world's chalk streams. They're our Amazon rainforest. If it was some other country doing this, the UK would be at the bloody UN shouting and screaming".

No, this is not Sir David Attenborough, this was Fergal Sharkey talking about the threat to UK chalk streams in a 2018 Observer interview.

The former lead singer of the rather excellent Undertones now lives near the River Lea (fed by Whitwell's River Mimram) and is an avid fly fisherman and highly visible champion of the chalk stream.

He even popped up on everyone's favourite lockdown TV programme, 'Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing', repeating this message and singing an equally passionate and impromptu rendering of his band's hit, Teenage Kicks. These streams need a champion like him.

But I digress.

We are immeasurably lucky to have such a fine example on our very own doorstep.

But I hasten to add, without allowing any complacency to creep in, that the River Oughton currently seems to be in fine fettle, especially following the recent rain together with the excellent ongoing work of environmental organisations, groups of volunteers and North Herts District Council. Thank you all.

And it was with this positive mindset that I walked the same route again this week, starting at the pumping station, following the footsteps of my 10-year-old self all the way.

And just like then I was determined to see it afresh as our familiarity with the Oughton's headline-grabbing highlights may well have inured us to their individual and collective beauty: familiarity breeds contempt.

In any other town, in any other place, just one of these features alone would be enough to delight. So, here goes...

The head of the river itself, with its dell, springs, swings and majestic beeches, the first bend in the river, dark and embowered, where the chalk bedrock makes its biggest and boldest appearance as the river bed, grey wagtails, tripping across the leaf-covered water, tails a'dipping, 'Old Chalky', the well-loved paddling spot with its benches, small meadow and protected banks from which excited kids and dogs launch themselves into the bracing water on those endless summer days.

The gentle English longhorn cows, slowly maintaining the perfect length of the common's meadow grass with their steady munching, the grassy mounds of the meadow ants' nests, turning the common into a strange other worldly landscape when the sun is low, the now (thankfully) repaired damn and weir that holds back the marsh springs' water and allows the 'Tales of the Riverbank' rushes and reeds to thrive and hide the noisy reed warblers on a May evening.

Hitchin's very own waterfall by the old West Mill, the large lazy brown trout that sway, seemingly static in the current, under the arch of the bridge by the russet-clad farm house, the staircase to the river, slightly downstream, allowing you to step tentatively into the water, wellies permitting, the straight stretch parallel to the football field where you will be serenaded by the loud 'kuur-uk' call of the moorhen and then finally on to the Burford Ray bridge with its incongruous flag pole, proudly proclaiming the site's national Green Flag status. (Oh, and not forgetting its curiously persistent whiff of gas.)

These are but a few of the highlights noticed on a damp October morning. If you were there you will no doubt have had your own list of observations and your own favourites. But that's the joy of this wonderful place, it offers so much and can accommodate us all.

It was good to see it afresh. I'm back tomorrow.