Water UK

It's very difficult not to start humming "Fog on the Tyne, it's all mine, all mine" when there is actual fog on the actual Tyne, and you are admiring the view, whilst walking over a bridge on your way to an event on the Gateshead side of the river. I couldn't linger to finish the song, however; the final Rural Economy and Land Use conference was about to start.

This research programme, also known as Relu, started in 2003, aimed at bringing people together from different academic disciplines, to try to find answers to some of the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges facing the countryside. Non-academics might think that this is a fairly easy process, involving a room, a table and some chairs, and possibly some coffee; however, as some of the researchers involved somewhat ruefully pointed out, it's not quite that easy. Take the word 'model', which proved to be a stumbling block for one particular project. For the social scientists, a model was concept; for the natural scientists, it was a research tool to be filled with data. Each discipline had to learn each other's way of working to get results.

Supporting a plethora of mosses on Exmoor, providing grouse with somewhere cool and boggy to live, or helping farmers use pesticides more efficiently and cost effectively - the water industry has a good story to tell when it comes to catchment management.

There aren't many water company meetings where a central theme of the discussion is how much the attendees love, or indeed hate, cows. But then catchment management is relatively new on the business agenda.