It’s toast for dinner for Angela Jones after another long day on the river. She’s not swimming or fishing though – she’s gathering data on water pollution from sewage, agriculture, and industry.
When she realised she’d been swimming among floating human faeces seven years ago she began a campaign which has grown beyond anything she imagined. She started training up hundreds of volunteers along the Usk and Wye rivers in southeast Wales who collect data from the water and report back to her when they spot pollution.
Her team of citizen scientists are monitoring the watercourses every week at more than 300 locations. They collect thousands of samples and publish the results, which are consistently alarming, online.
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She’s spent much of her life savings on campaigning and top-spec equipment for herself and many volunteers to “take on the big polluters” who continue to kill rivers and wildlife. They’ve now grown hundreds strong and are made up of academics and river health experts as well as concerned locals. It is groups like them which have brought the UK’s appalling river health into sharp focus.
Their data published in 2024 uncovered areas of the Usk being pumped into directly by Welsh Water from its sewage treatment works and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are failing drastically against targets set by the regulator Natural Resources Wales (NRW). You can read more on their work here. Welsh Water blames farmers among others for the majority of river pollution in Wales and claims it contributes a small percentage.
At the same time Angela’s adventure and wild swimming business, which relies on river health, has regressed to an unrecognisable level – so much so she has little left. “I have chosen to have no water, no heating, no internet, no cooker,” she said. “I’m not neglecting myself – I don’t believe I am. I’m truly content in my mind with the decisions I’ve made. I live a hugely minimalistic life now because I believe what I am doing is so important.”
She said 95% of her business has now gone because large swathes of Wales’ river courses are not safe to swim in. Within 10 years she’s seen her thriving business decline. Now she says her life is “practically 24/7” focused on river health – from testing to giving lectures at schools and colleges to highlighting the crisis at Westminster.
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“It’s not about my business. For me it’s about what this is doing to our rivers and the wildlife – our ecology,” she said. “It started around seven years ago. I was in a section of the Wye and I realised there was a metallic taste in the water. It was a section where I’d dive regularly into the water crowfoot and I’d see eels and little fish. But I noticed that the crowfoot was dying. I always look at the stones at the bed of the river because I like looking for the invertebrate but I started to notice the stones were muggy. So I slept there that night. To that point I’d never heard of a combined sewer overflow (also known as combined storm outlet) but this thing opened up and started releasing and it didn’t stop gushing out of it for ages. I couldn’t believe it.
“In the following weeks and months the water started to sting my eyes. I decided I was going to have to train myself up scientifically to be taken seriously. I knew I had to get academics onside too. I’m not academic in the slightest. I’m dyslexic and always struggled in school. I saw school as an 11-year prison term. Dyslexia wasn’t understood back then and I’d be punished terribly.”
She said of her business: “I can’t do much of it at all anymore. Certainly not in south Wales. I am lucky I have one small clean lake nearby but I have nothing else here anymore which is safe to swim in. What I’m doing is taking people on trips away like to Snowdonia (Eryri) where the water is clean. But I’m losing money by doing that.”
Why hasn’t she walked away from it? “I’m 58 now and I look at it as: ‘This is the third chapter in your life v how do you want to live it?’ I have had to wrestle the question of carrying on in my mind. I have a poor credit rating, I’m losing money, my business is dire. I could go and do something else and make money. But what I keep coming back to is that this fight is bigger than me and it’s more important than me. If I have to sacrifice everything to bring change for our rivers then that’s what I’m prepared to do. I come home and think: ‘Here we go again – toast and cereal for dinner.’ Winter comes around again and I think to myself: ‘What are you doing girl?’ And then I pull myself back and remind myself why.”
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All her life she’s felt instinctively connected to nature – so much so she made her daughter the first child ever to be christened on the top of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). “Before my daughter was born the doctor there told me she’d have a high chance of being severely disabled and they advised me to terminate,” she recalled. “I said no and when she was born after three weeks I was told she was perfectly healthy. I don’t watch much TV but that morning I was and I saw Bishop Jonathan Blake on This Morning talking about bringing the church to the people. I phoned the programme and told them: ‘I’m 30 next week and I would like the bishop to climb Snowdon, the roof of Wales, with me and christen my daughter on the summit to thank mother nature for this beautiful little girl’. I went up with her on my back and we did the christening on the top. I’ve climbed that mountain 100 times since and I’ve never seen it as clear as it was that day. I don’t regret it but I didn’t know that the bishop had invited all the press. It was a big shock when we got there and the cameras and photographers were there.
“My children were brought up on fun and adventures. When they were young I went to an auction and bought a barn in the countryside which needed a lot of work. I had £500 left so we bought a very cheap caravan and lived in that for two years while we renovated the barn. I wanted my children to grow up in freedom. We had a wicked time – lived there for 17 years with emus and sheep and ducks beside the water. We would have all the local children coming up to feed the emus and play games in the field. We’d chuck the kayaks in the water and paddle around until late. It was great times and was where my wild swimming business was born really. The parents and children were saying: ‘Will you take me out Ange?’ I became determined to help people who hadn’t had those opportunities and it just built into this amazing thing. Over the years our youngest member has been three months and the maturist is 96.”
Knowing her campaign to clean up Wales’ rivers needed to attract attention she threw herself into the ‘Wild Woman of the Wye’ persona she has since become known for. A Google search of her is met with strange pictures of her including her pulling a coffin with the Grim Reaper along the Wye, standing beside a giant box of eggs which reads “crappy eggs”, and others showing her in all manner of weird fancy dress at protests across the country.
“For this to be successful, to create change which we’re still pushing for, I knew I had to attract attention to the campaign and rattle some people,” she said. “I never envisaged this for my life. I didn’t think I’d be doing all this shouting and protesting and marching through Westminster but I’ve had to do it. I didn’t feel that comfortable giving presentations and lecturers on river health but I knew I had to do it.
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“I don’t care if people think I’m crazy – that’s fine. People have thought that about me all my life. I don’t mind the threats – I’m used it. I get vigilantes. I’ve had to change my address. But no-one is going to put me off. I get it more now. Now people know I’m not talking rubbish. We’ve got that data, we’ve got the support of very clued-up people, and I am not giving this up.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. Since I started seven years ago I’ve seen so many deadlines come and go and seen so much waffle about cleaning up our rivers. It’s a long fight and it’s one where people power is so important. People power can and will change things and we can all do our little bit to make a difference.”
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