Today was a mixed day. It had cooled off a little and I set about riding from the middle of Connecticut back to New York City. Almost as soon as I started riding today I saw a road sign which made me smile, simply due to the name of the place it was giving directions to. I smiled because it has a very famous counterpart in Europe....
As many of my readers will know, I am doing most of my riding on the smallest of roads, which generally means just one lane in each direction. In this way, I get to see much more than I would on highways and interstates. I knew that today I would be on a particular small road and would pass the Burlington State Fish Hatchery, which I decided I would go and see. I am glad that I did, for it was very interesting. They do everything from catching adult fish, collecting their eggs and milk, right the way through incubation and rearing of the fish until they are 3 years old.
This is the building that they incubate the eggs and keep the small fish (fry then fingerlings) in long troughs until they are about a year old....
The hatchery raises about 200,000 fish each year and as they are kept until 3 years old means they must have 600,000 fish at the facility at a time. They use 600 gallons of water a minute and all of this water is naturally flowing through the whole place on the slope it sits upon – there is not one pump needed.
There are numerous outside ponds where the fish are kept until 3 years old...
The fish they raise are Brown Trout and Kokanee Salmon, which are released across the state in hundreds of locations. I enjoyed visiting the hatchery and seeing the work they do there.
Next I saw something pretty cool on the road. I was passing a school where I saw lots of plastic cups had been placed and jammed into a wire fance. I couldn’t make it out at first.....
Then I went back for a closer look. It seems that love is in the air...
I rode through and stopped for lunch in a called New Milford, a very pretty place, with a tank sitting way out of context on the village green. I never did stop to ask why but it was close to a war memorial, so I guess the two were related....
Nest I get onto the subject of what the title of this blog post is about “Shame On You Roxbury, CT”. When I was leaving New Milford, it was hot and humid and I Iooked at my map and saw a place called Roxbury Falls was nearby and decided to try to find it to see what was there. It was a little gem – a river running over rocks that formed small pools that were just perfect for cooling off in this heat....
I parked the bike and started to walk towards the river to be confronted with this sign...
It seems that this piece of nature is reserved for a small band of local residents only! The falls are nowhere near the town so reserving it in this way really pissed me off. What a cheek they have to try to keep it for themselves – it is a natural resource that anybody should be able to use! Anyhow, I left without cooling my feet in the river in a bad mood. I do hope that the residents of Roxbury (or at least those that make the rules) are proud of themselves. I hope they are able to one day come to England where they will be welcomed with open arms and able to share everything that all citizens are able to use, then they will understand what true freedom and sharing our environment really means. I am going to write to the town mayor / council to expressed my extreme annoyance with their petty stance.
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