[1] The river has a catchment of 109.8 square miles (284 km2) and had an average flow of 29.8 million gallons (135.6 Megalitres) per day, measured at the gauging station in Cotham, near the mouth.

[2] The river rises as a series of springs and streams near the villages of Eastwell, Bottesford (Leics) Eaton in north-east Leicestershire, close to the 490-foot (150 m) contour, and flows generally northwards.

[3] The surface area of the reservoir is 52 acres (21 ha), and it feeds the canal through a channel, called The Carrier, which has open sections and runs through a tunnel for about 1 mile (1.6 km).

[9] At Devon Lane, there is a ford, besides which stands a single-arched brick bridge, with two holes passing through the spandrels, and iron railings in the centre of the parapet.

A fifth bridge, located in fields to the north of the village, consisting of three brick arches, carried the Newark to Leicester railway line over the river.

The river passes Cotham which lies to the east, and runs close to a Civil War redoubt at Hawton,[12] to arrive at the outskirts of Newark-on-Trent.

Here it passes another civil war defence, the Queen's Sconce, built in 1644 at a strategic point overlooking the Devon, the Trent and the Great North Road.

Reasons for the quality being less than good include sewage discharge for most of the river, and physical modification of the channel and poor nutrient management on adjacent agricultural land on the upper sections.

Like most rivers in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and mercury compounds, neither of which had previously been included in the assessment.