7,000 visitors, and still not Alton Towers!

I'm not going to explain the title. The current Unlocking the Severn team will smile at it, and perhaps if you follow the project on Twitter (@SevernUnlocked) you might get the reference. But the jist is: no we are not a large visitor experience centre, but wow we have engaged a lot of people with the project this year!

Hitting a milestone

This week we came to the end of our first full visitor year at Diglis, and we also hit a milestone of 7,000 visitors to Diglis Island and the fish pass. A pretty impressive figure considering we can only take 18 visitors into the underwater viewing gallery at one time.

Visitors take in the feat of engineering that is Diglis fish pass. Photo by Barbara Evripidou.

Developing the visitor experience

We started with pilot tours in October 2021, and while we knew we had something special, we had no idea just how much warmth and enthusiasm visitors would have for the project.

With the help of our brilliant volunteer Diglis Island Guides, we have developed the tours and activities programme at Diglis over the last year. In the spring, we trialled new 'drop in' sessions at Diglis fish pass, to allow as many people to see the spring fish migration as possible. Our 90-minute tours of Diglis Island and fish pass grow with each new exciting snippet of local history that our DIGs uncover. Then over the summer we looked at how we could use the two sites more creatively: holding exhibitions and paddleboarding experiences at Diglis Island, and trialling storytime sessions, family friendly visits, documentary screenings and even yoga at Diglis fish pass. Through each of these events, we could encourage new audiences to appreciate the river and learn about the wildlife that relies on the reconnected River Severn.

Diglis fish pass visits and family-friendly sessions.

Left: Pete Medlicott. Middle and right: Barbara Evripidou.

Left: Paddleboarding, Discover Paddling. Middle: My Severn photography exhibition, Corinne Spiller. Right: Yoga in Diglis underwater viewing gallery, Corinne Spiller.

An extra chapter to 2022...

Our visitor season was due to end with our final 90-minute tours in October. However, we learned that nature works to its own schedule! While September and early October visits to the fish pass were fairly devoid of any wildlife past the window (as is expected this time of year), the end of October saw the arrival of migrating salmon. Our team decided to extend the visitor season until mid-November, with additional drop-in sessions and bookable Saturday visits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgAoEENzezY

Salmon speeding through Diglis fish pass, back in October.

Although not all groups were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of salmon heading upstream to spawn, many of our groups were treated to special wildlife encounters at Diglis Fish Window. We had reports of perch, bleak, carp and "something wiggly" (according to one of the DIGs. We reckon river lamprey). But yes, some of our groups were successful in salmon spotting. In fact our final tour group of 2022 were treated to such an encounter, with a salmon slowly passing Diglis Fish Window for all to see!

Salmon hangs around for a photo opportunity, before swimming off upstream!