Over the weekend our Community Engagement Officer represented us at the Ogwen Odyssey in Cwm Idwal . The event was to raise money for the Ogwen mountain rescue team which is the second busiest team in the UK with 178 call outs last year! Oisin demonstraited our community water testing, shared our river restoration projects and educated how it’s possible to start protecting the rivers from home.

A series of guest speakers attended including the Ogwen Mountain Rescue, National Trust, BMC, Snowdonia Society, the Snowdonia National Park and Y Carneddau Landscape Partnership. Each organisation was stationed around Llyn Idwal with the North Wales Rivers Trust located at the picturesque Llyn Idwal.

We spoke about the vital work we do to restore rivers including improving catchments, water quality testing, educating and raising awareness in the community and planting riparian buffer zones. During the day we also provided demonstrations on how to test water quality using equipment such as TDS monitor, Nitrate strips, phosphate and ammonia checker using a sample from Llyn Idwal and Afon Ogwen in Bethesda.

Oisin said ‘It was a really successful day. I went and took a water sample from Bethesda so we could compare it to a water sample from Llyn Idwal. Being able to see a stark contrast between both samples even though there is only about a 10km difference was an eye opener to the participants. It was also a great opportunity to give people a go to test themselves and learn about what can affect water quality.’’