The Toad in the Hole

don't think so. This wasn't a little baby rainbow.

I've only had it in a restaurant- fillets that were (as much as I could tell) just dredged in flour and shallow fried - same as trout often is. 'Twas the sauce that made it - green and herby / buttery. I'm afraid my ninja translation skills weren't up to the detail of the sauce!

The big issues with feral big cats are the absence of dead ones. There should be some evidence. There are also issues around population viability and longevity. I'd love to see irrefutable evidence, but I'm not holding my breath. Regarding egrets, they are fairly common on the Trent these days- certainly showing up around Collingham/ Besthorpe/ Langford, as well as at Attenborough nature reserve (where there were breeding bitterns this year - another heron relative)

I've just bought a large trout from my local fishmonger - caught in one of the pits adjacent to Colwick marina. Last one I had ate really well - we fed 5 people off a £15 fish. Nothing wrong with eating freshwater fish. Carp is good as well, but I've only had it in France. TBH Rick Stein's deli did a pike pate that was ok, but massively overpriced

I'd hesitate to say "silent majority", but it does perhaps reflect how forums can become echo chambers for a relatively low number of active posters, rather than the wider proportion of less vociferous occasional posters, not a reflection on the individuals themselves, who have a point of view they're getting across, but rather on the importance of not confusing the internet and real life. Having said that, you can see similar things working in the other direction in things like popular polls/ phone votes- the way that (for example) a well organised group can swing votes for things like lottery projects or TV phone polls.

It's poorly worded, but I think they mean that it's being seen in rivers where it hasn't been seen in 200 years, rather than it went extinct in the 1800s Also, whilst most bait is imported, this paper discusses the issues surrounding using protected species as bait for recreational fishing http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24936643

I'm wasted here.

Now, I would be alarmed if C&RTs recruitment strategy was predicated on boat ownership, thats a pretty narrow pool of potential, and a sizeable chunk of that is retired, too focussed on keeping their home afloat, or (whisper it) not actually that good with talking to other people, let alone encouraging, motivating, leading and defending them

They have! There was an initial formatting error, which has been fixed now

One of the key issues would appear to be training of volunteers in those vital face to face skills. In particular, they need to be taught that they are representatives of C&RT whilst they are on duty and that their attitude and professionalism need to be ever bit as good as paid staff, and that they are providing a service to boaters and other canal users, whose knowledge and experience may often exceed theirs. Similarly boaters need to give them the same respect and civility that they would give to paid staff. I've undertaken the volunteer co-ordinator role for conservation groups in the past, and whilst volunteer technical skillsets are usually very good, nine times out of ten, the biggest issue is their customer facing "soft" skills.

I bet Henry I is even less keen on them

There's a positive surfeit of them.

think you've messed up the format, I'd vote for the first option, but I think you've set it as a heading

At a guess the Ponsonby Arms, just down the embankment

It may be that it wasn't a community boat as such. A group I know of (no specifics) provides disabled holidays on hire boats, with the same mixed bag of crew competency as conventional hirers. I now know this because what I assumed was a community boat (from the signwriting) ripped my mooring pins out by passing at ramming speed. When I saw the boat on it's home mooring later I was, ahem, abrupt - the poor guy cleaning it down apologised and explained the situation to me

Used to occasionally see someone out running with a goat. Given if I go running, my dog stops to pee up every other tree, this could make a lot of sense

Oh yes, we've seen the market trump basic but essential biosecurity so many times. On a tangent, but I think the lessons of the 2000 Foot and Mouth crisis have already been forgotten.

Have a greenie (possibly my first?) this nails the problem pretty much exactly. Conversely, the fact that ash reproduces sexually means it is likely to have good genetic diversity, almost certainly some lines will have better resistance, so I don't think we'll see complete devastation and we will eventually (on a tree, not human timescale) see good recovery. Having said that, because chalara isn't as dramatic as some diseases, I think it's a bit more insidious. We will undoubtedly see some serious landscape change in areas (like the ecologically important lowland coppice woodlands) dominated by ash in the next few years. Having said that, there is evidence in the pollen record that there have been big elm diebacks before, and the species has recovered.

Doesn't bode well for Cropredy, though the boaters should be feeling massively smug compared with the campers

Buy insurance. I was working on water sampling and drowned 2 phones in as many weeks through them slipping out of my pocket into water. Bought insurance on the third and it lasted 3 years without so much as a splash.

Is it fast? wrong question. Is it safe? I'll get the drill.......

looks like there may be new gravel traffic on the trent if the proposed gravel works at shelford get the go ahead. From the extraction site to a processing works nearer Nottingam