Chalk Stream Challenge badge

What is the Challenge?

The challenge is suitable for Scouts, Guides, and similar groups or even keen individuals. It involves activities that can easily be customised to suit different age ranges.

Download the information from our Learning webpage. Here you’ll find the map of the route with all the information sheets you need for spotting and identifying birds, insects, plants and activities to do on the way.

There is a suggested route along The River Chess giving lots of info on the way. Once you have completed the challenge fill in the form on our website and order your badge!

The Chalk Stream Challenge was created by two volunteers as part of the Watercress and Winterbournes Landscape Partnership Scheme. The scheme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, focuses on the headwaters of the Rivers Test and Itchen in Hampshire, and encourages children and young people to explore and learn about their local chalk stream.

The Chess Chalk Stream Challenge was adapted for The River Chess by the Chiltern Chalk Streams Project with funding from Smarter Water Catchment.

Why the Chess?

The Chess is one of the 9 Chalk Streams in the Chilterns National Landscape.

With only around 300 chalk streams in the world, these rivers are very rare and we are lucky to have several in the Chilterns. They are home to a variety of wildlife such as water voles, brown trout, damsel and dragonflies, water crowfoot, mayflies and many others.

Many chalk streams are winterbourne (they flow flows only or primarily in winter), therefore it is natural for some stretches to dry out during the year, especially in late summer. This is due to a drop in the water table, where rainfall has not recharged the aquifer.
Chalk streams have been used and modified for centuries for water supply, farming, transportation, fishing and industry (including watercress and milling). Although seasonal changes in the water flow are common, over abstraction of water from chalk streams like the River Chess can be extremely damaging for the ecosystem.

The negative effects of low flow, caused by abstraction and exacerbated by climate change, are also aggravated by the pollution caused by faming and the sewage treatment works.

The natural environment created by the river is very important and precarious. By completing the Chess Challenge you will learn about the river geography and ecosystem, and how to help preserve this amazing habitat.