QUIZ ANSWERS: Do you know your rivers?

QUIZ ANSWERS: Do you know your rivers?

How did you do in our quiz about the National Park’s rivers for World Rivers Day on 23 September.

1. There are seven main rivers that carve their way through the South Downs National Park – can you name them?
   A. West to east they are the Itchen, Meon, Rother, Arun, Adur, Ouse and Cuckmere.
2. The river Itchen is 45km from its source to Southampton and the chalk it runs through helps to keep it ‘gin clear’ making it a hit for anglers and otters alike. How much of the river runs through the National Park?
   A. You might be surprised to learn that 58.5km of the river Itchen runs through the South Downs National Park – given that the river itself is only 45km long. But that’s because of the number of channels it splits into on its journey.
3. Which is the only river to lie entirely in the South Downs National Park from source to where it, ahem, Stophams.
   Clue: It shares its name with two others UK rivers, one runs through East Sussex and Kent and the other in South Yorkshire.
   A. The Rother is the only river whose full length (56.3km) lies entirely in the National Park.
4. Which South Downs river where water vole were locally extinct in 2012 now has a thriving population thanks to a local reintroduction programme?
   A. Water voles are now breeding on the River Meon all the way from source at Meon Springs to the wetlands at Titchfield Haven.
5. Rivers migrate and move over time. Which two South Downs rivers, which today run very different courses, once shared an estuary in Lancing?
   A. Today the rivers Adur and Arun run very different courses, with the Arun’s mouth at Littlehampton and the Adur’s at Shoreham but before the fifteenth century they shared one estuary at Lancing.
6. Which river’s name’s literal translation means ‘water river’.
   A. The name Ouse probably comes from the Celtic name Ūsa and was derived from udso meaning water*
7. Which river’s mouth sits at the heart of England’s first Heritage Coastline, an area which receives more than a million visitors every year?
   A. The Cuckmere – possibly the most photographed river in the South Downs.

*See Ouse River. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011) from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Ouse+River

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