Griff Rhys Jones..

A blog about a river in Abingdon should probably mention Griff Rhys Jones appearance in Abingdon who was talking about rivers.
Other Abingdon blogs do the event more justice than I can:

Annabel's book blog has excellent coverage: http://gaskella.blogspot.com/2009/08/griff-does-abingdon.html

Backstreeter's ubiquitous Abingdon Blog: http://www.abingdonblog.co.uk/2009/08/griff-rhys-jones-returns.html

And obviously Mostly Books - who organised the event:http://mostly-books.blogspot.com/2009/08/griff-rhys-jones-and-rivers.html

Griff spoke for about an hour - no notes or script and it soon became apparent that he wasn't a stooge for the producers, he was genuinely interested and knowledgeable on the subject and seems to have become a somewhat unwanted focal figure for rights of access to rivers.
A question and answer session followed, with an interesting one on harnessing the weirs on the Thames for electricity. I seem to recall a proposal to use the river Cam in Cambridge, the feasibility study is linked below.

http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/public/pdfs/Jesus-Weir-Micro-hydro-report.pdf

But I don't know if it was ever undertaken, but a £500,000project to generate 430,000kWh per year from a weir in Cumbria has commenced:

http://www.renew-reuse-recycle.com/showarticle.pl?id=2102

As is stated in the article "We hope this demonstration project can be replicated in other mills around the country."