Bloworth Slack—Not as Lazy as It Sounds

Bloworth Slack, just moments before it meets Badger Gill to become Hodge Beck. Bransdale again — but today we’ve been beside this quietly lovely woodland stream, its amber rocks lit by a sky so clear it almost seems rude.

I never took Geography at ‘O’ Level. I was a science boy, apparently, and Geography was firmly on the arts side of the fence. Which probably explains why rivers are one of those features that now strike me as endlessly strange and worth thinking about.

Take the name “Slack.” It sounds like the beck is having a bit of a lie-down. It is not. It charges over the rocks like it has somewhere urgent to be, all white water and noise. And yet, oddly, rivers actually get faster as they go downhill and grow wider. Up here, the rough, boulder-choked bed drags at the water like a bad road drags at a car — all friction and resistance. Lower down, the channel smooths out, friction drops, and the water moves faster than you would ever expect. Nature, quietly showing off¹KS4 GCSE River Learning Package. The Flood Hub. https://thefloodhub.co.uk/news/new-ks4-gcse-river-landscapes-package-now-available-on-the-flood-hub/.

The bends are not random either. Up here, the river has barely enough energy to get out of bed, let alone cut sideways through solid rock. So it goes around obstacles instead, leaving great interlocking spurs of land jutting into the valley. What little energy it has, it saves for cutting straight down — grinding the channel deeper, rock by rock, year by year, through hydraulic force and sheer, patient abrasion.

Rivers, it turns out, are rather clever.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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  KS4 GCSE River Learning Package. The Flood Hub. https://thefloodhub.co.uk/news/new-ks4-gcse-river-landscapes-package-now-available-on-the-flood-hub/