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Quick fire look back at this year's awesome Urban River Champion's Conclave

I'll sandwich this quick-fire montage that captures some of what went on at May's Urban Conclave weekend between Phil Sheridan's full presentation (blogged previously here: http://urbantrout.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/urban-conclave-if-youve-ever-felt.html)and a future blog post featuring Prof. David Lerner's excellent talk (video edit still on the "to do" list...).

There were many more fantastic talks that I was unable to video unfortunately (and I only chose to film the presentations by people who I absolutely knew wouldn't be fazed by the camera pointed at them!)

The video embedded below documents the meeting of around 25 core members who run Urban River restoration projects from around the UK including: Wales (Rivers Taff and Ogmore), Salford, Sheffield, Newbury, Burnley, London, Huddersfield, Bradford, Keighley and Wigan.

It was an honour to host them all and to hear all of their reports, stories, trials and tribulations. I also believe that the weekend was truly inspirational for all participants - a vital factor given the many set-backs and nay-sayers that every person who runs a project like these will encounter time and again. I also look forward to the next time we run this event - as there were several groups who were unable to attend on the specific date of the 2013 event. For the two previous events, see my blog posts here: http://urbantrout.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/triumphant-urban-river-conclave.html and here: http://urbantrout.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/return-of-urban-conclave-even-bigger.html

Music was composed, played, recorded and donated by John Pearson (thanks John) and I've used it on a couple of videos now. Our thanks to the Kings Arms in Salford (a cracking pub), to Evan Evans brewery for the signature "Mayfly" bitter, all at Salford Friendly Anglers, All of the speakers and participants from Trout in the Town groups from across the UK and especially to the Fishmonger's Company for enabling this event to take place via their funding support.


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