Rivers, canals and Britain’s glorious waterways are championed and admired at every opportunity. They are the subject of countless photos, television programmes and books – and are places to visit and enjoy whenever considering a walk in the countryside. Sadly, not so the humble ditch; yet they are the all-important capillaries supplying the veins of the UK’s far more visual watercourses.

As well as having a practical farming purpose and being important in preventing flooding, ditches are an essential habitat for many species of flora and fauna. In no way a dry riverbed of hard facts, A Year in a Ditch is informative and a source of knowledge to anyone interested in exploring the delights of this vital habitat. The book is full of relevant quirky notes and obscure snippets, the fanciful and factual; old wives’ tales; quotations and snippets of poetry.Ditches are an integral part of some very bizarre sports and pastimes indeed and there are even suggestions as to how one can actually dine out in a ditch!

A Year in a Ditch will be a wonderful read for anyone wishing to know more about the 500,000 kilometres of these often-neglected waterways that have threaded their way through the British countryside for millennia.