William Jessop was a generous man, always ready to give a fellow engineer a leg up. Building the Cromford canal, in the Derbyshire Dales, he hired Benjamin Outram, the son of a local investor, as his assistant. Their great work terminates at Cromford Wharf, once a harbinger of the industrial revolution, now dozing in the evening sunshine, its crumbling stonework the colour of honey.
The northern section of the canal, five miles from the wharf to Ambergate, is a site of special scientific interest, noted for being a last redoubt for water voles, a change of use I doubt Jessop could have foreseen.
Water voles like broad margins of waterside vegetation, which is richly offered on the far bank of Cromford canal. I took up station opposite some burrows.
In summer, these margins are luxuriant with meadowsweet and water mint, and thick with reeds. Conservationists had lopped some trees along the bank to let more light on to the patch, from where I watched.
Yet I waited in vain. The towpath is popular with Derbyshire folk making their version of the passeggiata, often with dogs, and the water vole is easily spooked.
Instead, I watched a dabchick, another skittish creature, although this one seemed unfazed. In Old English these grebes were known as “arsefoot”, capturing how the bird’s legs are located towards the back of its body, which is oddly small in proportion to its elegant rufous neck and head.
I got a brief glimpse of a fluffy backside as the bird dived, then followed a stream of rising bubbles along the canal for five or six metres before the dabchick burst from the surface, sunlight catching droplets falling from a bill clamped around something dark and squirming, the splash of colour at its gape lime green.
Looking round I saw I had company. A young couple dressed exclusively in black, the woman in round sunglasses and black lipstick, wearing translucent, floating layers, the man, in black drainpipe jeans, perched confidently on a pimped wheelchair with large chrome wheels. Both were entranced at the dabchick’s antics.
Then the bird dived again, and the couple turned away, taking each other’s hand, along the towpath.
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