Monday 18th August: On leave.

Tuesday 19th August: Kenny and Steven and James and Sean out to try electric fishing - and get some done. I have a meeting here with the Newcastle Environment Agency to discuss a position ahead of the meeting in Amsterdam later this week, about what we want to get for Sea-trout  out of this present Inter-Regional progamme. In the afternoon, spend time on the Web looking up to see what work is being done on the Sea-trout of the Rhine and North Germany, and find it quite cheering as there have been a number of recoveries as water quality has improved. A lot of money being spent on putting in or re-designing fish passes and generally improving access from the sea. Had never thought about it before, but the land reclamation in the Netherlands over the centuries must have made an appreciable reduction in the amount of feeding area available to Sea-trout from around the southern North Sea. The Rhine delta in its natural state must have been a great place for them - but there is now only a single, artificial, waterway by which fish can get from the sea into the river Rhine.

Wednesday 20th August: Kenny & Steven set out to go electric-fishing, but had to return as even the burns too high for them. Office work for me, then set out for the airport to go to Amsterdam for a meeting  of the international partners hoping to put a bid together for the latest "InterReg" programme of EU funding. The proposal is to develop work on fish crossing barriers and borders, our interest being in, finally, getting to grips with what our Sea-trout do at sea.

Thursday 21st August: Find my way from the hotel airport to the HQ of the local water company via the Amsterdam metro and trains. Not used to separate cycle lanes between road and pavements, which are also used by motorbikes, so have a number of close encounters - at least you can hear the motorbikes coming, the bikes are silent. About 30 people at the meeting, from Flemish nature research organisations; the Sea-trout fisheries organisation from the Danish island of Fyn;  the Municipality of Falkenberg, on the W. Coast of Sweden, the EA and  ART and a large contingent from several Dutch water boards, angling and research organisations, whose names I couldn't really catch but amongst whom, I am fairly sure, was Dr. Strabismus, of Utrecht, (whom God preserve!). No Germans yet, but the search continues. All spoke more or less good English and the work packages gradually came together. On the side, learned how Gyrodactylus was spread to Falkenberg's river by a consignment of infected Rainbow Trout made to a local farm and that catches have collapsed to about 20% of the previous.  Also learned that only the more northerly Baltic Salmon populations are, more or less, immune to Gyrodactylus - the more southerly ones are much less so.

Friday 22nd August: The second day of the meeting. Finalise the work programmes, are taken through the budgetting requirements and then hear from the Dutch rep for the InterReg programme, who warns us that there are a considerable number of programmes putting in for this funding, so our proposal is going to have to be good. Meeting ends at lunchtime, which gives me time to look round central Amsterdam and find the cheese & syrup waffles James  (who is half Dutch ) had asked me to get. Plenty of tulip bulbs on sale in the shops, but surprisingly difficult to find cheese and wandering around takes me into rather a specialised part of the city, near the central station. I suspect that few people have ever gone to that area looking for cheese, but there was, at least, a very fine, old-fashioned, coffee shop that did actually sell coffee.