h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From high on Middleton Moor it tumbles into the Tees, at the point where the pants of Patrick once drifted majestically into the watery distance. It passes on the way a bridge whose arches, had it been built elsewhere, could easily have been home for several families, but it wasn't so it is simply content to have frightened the breakfast out of some small boys over the years and held together the steep sides of a beautifully hidden valley for rather longer than I could have done so myself.
At least seven of the Worlds finest dams were built within a mile either side of this bridge during the great dam-building era, early to mid seventies, I know, I built many of them myself with rocks, leaves, ferns and what may or may not have once been an older relative of a Honda C-90.
The exact same stretch of river was the inspiration behind the film "Deliverance" which was based on the adventures of some of the aforementioned small boys who, armed only with bags of kets and pocket-knives would make the torturous journey downstream in an inflatable dinghy, stopping only to construct another dam or build a killer rope-swing, which would be designed with a stunning degree of skill (and equally stunning disregard for safety) so as to break and dump the unfortunate swinger in either a goodly clump of stinging nettles or indeed the river itself, to the immense amusement of all other small boys in the vicinity for several summers to come.
While lesser rivers have their legendary associations concerning big worms and the like, The Sockburn Worm (Tees), The Lambton Worm (Wear) and Willy-Bobnobs' Worm (Tyne) the most famous of them all is The Eggleston Ostrich. The story goes that there never was and quite possibly never will be an ostrich running at great speed along the wooded banks of Eggleston Beck.
Guided tours of this, the finest and most historic stretch of water in England can easily be arranged by sending lots of money plus travelling expenses and some kets to The Snockerty Friddle c.o. H2G2
Ta!

they edited out all the true bits and left the nonsense