The River Gade is a rather special river as it is a chalk stream, which is rare in this country. In fact there are only 200 chalk dreams in the world. It rises a few miles up the valley and meets the River Bulbourne at Two Waters. These flow into the River Chess and then the Thames. Our Reception class really enjoyed their opportunity to do an environmental study of the river. They noticed how clear the water was and also the water cress growing on the banks. (Hemel Hempstead used to be a centre for water cress production). When they used the nets to see what was under water they discovered lots of small invertebrates and fish. I was hoping for a brown trout (which thrive in the river), but was disappointed. They also found a large number of baby crayfish, which sounds like good news but isn’t. They are the invasive signal crayfish, an import from America and shouldn’t be in the river at all. Many thanks to Mrs Cross for allowing us to wade in their part of the river.
