No, not the Cardiff International White Water Centre (although we did end up there!)…
…but on Saturday 12th June five of our club paddlers took a trip down the Taff from Radyr to Cardiff Bay. This was the first time the club had been on the Taff (apart from a race some years ago that 2 of us took part in) and we had been expecting a little more water in the upper reaches (we think we found every single rock on the way down some of the shallow sections!). Portaging Llandaff weir was rather harder than we anticipated (although we did find a better route for next time!) but walking down the dry face of Blackweir proved easier. The last half-hour across Cardiff Bay and up the mouth of the Ely was the ‘sting in the tail’ as we paddled a strong headwind, but we made it just in time before the access gates closed at the white water centre.
We were all pretty exhausted by the time we reached the end of the10-mile trip but agreed this (or a variation of it) was definitely one to be repeated! And we managed to fill 3 sacks of litter as part of The Great Paddle Cleanup – even though we only picked up a tiny percentage of the debris we saw on a very short section of the river. Still, that’s 3 sacks less than there was…
