I like rivers.All land is part of a watershed or river basin and all is shaped by the water which flows over it and through it. Indeed, rivers are such an integral part of the land that in many places it would be as appropriate to talk of riverscapes as it would be of landscapes. A river is much more than water flowing to the sea. Its ever–shifting bed and banks and the groundwater below, are all integral parts of the river. Even the meadows, forests, marshes and backwaters of its floodplain can be seen as part of a river – and the river as part of them. A river carries downhill not just water, but just as importantly sediments, dissolved minerals, and the nutrient–rich detritus of plants and animals, both dead and alive