After recent rain the water level was a bit high and the river was flowing quite swiftly. Fortunately the river bed upstream is rocky rather than muddy so wading was not too difficult.
Just above the measuring station, there is a lot of balsam on the far side of the river but it is not very accessible. A little further upstream there were scattered plants on the near bank which we cleared before wading across to tackle the opposite bank. Near to the river this is not as bad as last year but it's still bad further away from the river on the field edge.
At Black Rock we cleared a few isolated plants including one giant which had been growing on a fallen tree lying in the water near to the bank and had developed a stem as thick as a man's leg.
We also cleared a specimen which had been standing proud on the far bank for the past couple of weeks.
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We continued upstream as far as the little islands clearing near to the riverbank though not managing to finish everything along the field edge.
We revisited several places where the balsam was significantly reduced from what we found last year. Seeds can remain viable for two years so it's not surprising that we found some plants in areas cleared in previous years. It will be interesting to see how things look next year.
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