Episode 3 The Taff: The River That Made Wales

This is the River Taff in South Wales.

It runs from the wild summits of the Brecon Beacons

to the capital city, Cardiff.

I love this river, I absolutely love it.

40 years ago the Taff was declared officially dead,

killed by centuries of heavy industry.

But today it's one of the finest fishing rivers in Wales.

How is that fish still on?

My name is Will Millard. I'm a writer and a fisherman.

I want to see how this river has come back to life.

It's so cold!

It may be short, you can walk the length of the Taff in three days

but it runs through a stunning landscape packed with history.

I want to get to know this river from source to sea.

Salmon from the city centre.

What a river!

This is the story of the River Taff.

I'm on the final stretch of my journey down the River Taff

and this is a voyage through modern Wales.

I'm heading south from Pontypridd towards Cardiff

and the Bristol Channel, where the Taff empties into the sea.

I've teamed up with canoeist and conservationist Paul Kent.

How long have you been on the Taff, Paul?

Well, either working or taking my leisure on it, probably,

-20-odd years now.

-Really?

Basically, I've either walked or paddled, in some cases, even swam

the entire length of it,

so I do know it very well from that point of view.

What do you love about it, Paul?

It's a wild place in the middle of a very urban environment.

The banks of the river here are lined with warehouses, factories

and office buildings.

But from the water, they're completely hidden.

All it takes is that thin band of trees, ten metres or so of trees

and it's gone from an urban environment

to a rural river.

-Yeah.

-It's an area to come and have a bit of peaceful recreation and

on another time have a good thrill.

First rapid on the River Taff.

I'm pretty nervous.

Certainly won't be the first time I've ever capsized.

Forget that thought, Will. Forget that thought.

The Taff is one of the steepest rivers south of the Scottish border.

It descends almost 900 metres in just 40 miles.

Rain that falls in Merthyr Tydfil can be in Cardiff Bay within

just four hours.

Straighten.

Straighten.

Damn!

Downstream lean.

-Well done.

-C plus.

-You didn't end up upside down, that's good enough.

'This is a great way to see the Taff,

'but make sure you have permission from local landowners

'and angling clubs before hitting the water.'

Doesn't seem to matter how far I come down this river, I'm still

constantly, constantly impressed at just how little effort it takes

to feel like you're in a really nice, wild, natural spot.

Do you think people's perception of the river has changed at all?

Probably not.

Probably not.

A lot of people still regard it as the industrial sewer it

was for 150 years.

The disregard to the Taff can be seen in the towns that

line its banks.

Historically, the people of the valley literally turned their backs

on the polluted river, with the houses built facing away

from its waters.

I guess, when the houses were built and the factory units were built,

the river wasn't important.

The important thing was the road, in front.

So, the houses all back on to the river.

As we make our way down the Taff the river begins to change.

It's wider and slower.

A river fit for a capital city.

There's a constant drone in the background here.

Like one that we've not actually experienced

so far on this paddle and that can mean only one thing,

which is that we're approaching Cardiff and we're approaching

the M4 bridge.

Passing beneath the motorway, I'm now on the outskirts of the city

and I've got a very early start in the morning.

It's eight o'clock on Saturday morning

and I'm wondering around the bushes in a park in Cardiff, dressed in

rubber because I'm hoping I'm going to meet a group of Cardiff

residents that celebrate the River Taff in their own very unique way.

And I really do hope that they're here, otherwise I'm going to

make some very special friends, or get arrested.

Thank goodness for that.

-Morning, everybody.

-Hello!

I'm Will, nice to meet you all.

-So, what's the plan?

-We're going to go swimming!

We're going to go swimming - brilliant!

I've come prepared.

These are the members of the Living Taff Project, a group of dedicated

enthusiasts and academics who've made it their mission to re-connect

people with the river.

One of the reasons behind the Living Taff is to make people aware of

what a beautiful resource it is because it was forgotten for

hundreds of years because it had become the deposit for the

Industrial Revolution.

We were feeding the world with coal, with iron and suddenly things have

changed and the nature has come back again.

This is all very lovely, isn't it?

I'd probably just be getting up now,

making myself a cup of tea but instead I'm just about to get

into the River Taff for a swim...

with a new group of friends.

She's brave!

THEY LAUGH AND SHRIEK

It must've snowed on the Brecon Beacons last night.

Even the dog's feeling the cold.

LAUGHTER

What is it about wild swimming that, you know,

gets you down here in the morning when most people are in bed?

It just makes me feel really alive!

-Absolutely!

-You're out of the comfort bubble of a heated house

and a carpeted room and you're amongst elements, like,

look at the water and stone and leaves and sunlight!

I'll be honest,

I do feel like my heart's about to burst out of my wetsuit!

That is bracing!

Yeah, it's amazing the range of things your body can feel

that normally you don't feel.

Your body can feel a range of things right now?

LAUGHTER I can't feel anything!

For many of the people here, there is more to

the Taff than just fun and games.

They recognise the vital role rivers play in our landscape.

When you guys aren't swimming in the Taff, what do you do for a living?

I work doing environmental engineering,

so it's a lot of work to do with the river itself

and trying to improve water quality.

-How about yourself?

-So, I actually work with Rosie, lurking out

sewerage overflows into rivers.

-Do you?

-Trying to monitor and control that.

So, yeah, dipping in the river before work kind of motivates me

to work a bit harder during the day.

Lots of the problems come from increased urbanisation

and the amount of run-offs.

People are paving over their driveways, of course,

all the water that falls on there washes

straight into the sewerage system, then washes off into the rivers.

So, you get lots catchment problems with the amount of sediment

going into the river.

The sewerage systems are overloaded and it causes flooding.

Over the years, Cardiff has seen its fair share of flooding.

Heavy rains and high tides would cause havoc in the city streets.

Part of Cardiff were under water, including the city's historic

Victorian thoroughfare, Cathedral Road.

Now, with the threat of climate change, we're at last beginning

to understand the importance of our natural river systems.

There's lots of schemes now where we're looking at green

infrastructure in the towns and cities, in catchments like this.

So, instead of having only grey, hard infrastructure like pipes

and concrete, we're using nature to do its work for us.

So, creating big, green basins where the water can rush into

and sit there for a while, before it slowly goes back into the river.

So there's loads of really exciting work being done in Wales.

So, on three, yeah?

One, two, three!

CHEERING

We've been conditioned to be afraid of our rivers,

to hide them from view and in doing so we neglect them

but they're special places that need our help.

And we lose touch with them at our peril!

I'm nearly home now...

a few miles from the city centre.

On this stretch of the river there is one group of people

who have never forgotten the treasures of the Taff.

The river draws a die-hard bunch of anglers to its banks year round.

-You all right, Rich?

-Hi, Will, you OK?

-How's it going, mate?

-Yeah, good, mate.

-You had any luck?

-Not yet.

-Good to see you, pal.

-Soon will, though, don't worry about that.

Good of you to give me the downstream peg, Rich.

Ah, well, I've got to be nice to you at some point, haven't I?

Rich Cox is from Gabalfa, a large estate that backs onto the river.

He works in the local tackle shop and has been selling me bait

since I moved to Cardiff.

That smells like hot sick!

-The barbel absolutely love these things.

-Really?

I'm hoping he can help me catch a fish that has so far alluded me,

the barbel.

Tried all through last season, June, July, nothing.

I think I probably put in getting on for 100 hours now

without even a bite.

There are a lot of big fish in this water but it's just finding them.

This bottom feeding monster is often nicknamed "the golden torpedo".

It's a tricky fish to catch, even if you hook one, it can be a real

fight to land it.

The record on the Taff is a whopping 19 pounds, two ounces.

But the best barbel spots are a closely guarded secret.

It's like a little social group, isn't it, the barbel fishermen

of Gabalfa? I've heard them be called the Taffia.

HE LAUGHS

See your rod-tip bouncing around now. See, I'd be striking those,

that's probably where I've been going wrong.

Catching leaves. HE LAUGHS

There's half a trolley down here, Rich.

-Nothing new.

-Yeah.

It used to be full up on the rocks, you couldn't fish the rock pool

at some points because there'd be so many cars

and the police would be down, pulling them out.

It was a constant feature, motorbikes, push bikes,

trolleys, everything.

The river was like a jungle.

We had to push a float through a trolley or around a trolley, around

a motorbike and try to find fish hiding behind obstacles

in the water.

It was quite rough in those days.

Really totally different from what it is now.

Cardiff born and bred,

Rich hasn't only seen a change in the river but in the city too.

Everything is new and it just keeps growing and growing.

I think that's why it's attracted so many people to come here now.

-Much better now, much nicer city to live in.

-Wow, water's coming up.

-Still makes my...

-Heart's in your mouth.

-Yeah.

I actually thought that was a fish then, it's not, it's got to be weed.

We're not having much luck.

-Another leaf fish.

-Another leaf fish.

The river is flowing fast

and a lot of leaves are getting tangled in our lines.

I don't think we've got much time left here, have we, Rich?

Not at all, the river's rising quite fast, mate.

Oh, dear, I might have to chalk

another one up to the River Taff here, I think.

Beaten again.

I've been incredibly lucky fishing the Taff.

But it looks like the Cardiff barbel will remain the one that got away.

As you follow the Taff south towards the city centre,

the river flows through vast parklands.

A green heart to the city, and testament to the vast wealth

that once flowed down from the valleys and out to sea.

The river that was once a black, industrial sewer

is now a place of leisure.

Cardiff's seen huge investment in recent years.

It's now a vibrant city, and it's sport that draws many visitors.

It's days like today I absolutely love being in Cardiff.

-There's a match day on...

-Go, France!

..there's at least five or six different nationalities

walking up and down the street. It's a great, great atmosphere.

But where I'm stood, right here,

the River Taff used to flow right through this area.

That's actually Quay Street over there.

It was straightened so they could put the railway line in.

And now we have this fantastic stadium,

quite possibly one of the best stadiums in the world,

right on the banks.

Opened in 1999, as the Millennium Stadium.

Cardiff's Coliseum draws huge crowds.

But it was the Taff that made Cardiff.

The city's role as a port put it on the world stage.

It was a hub for trade and people.

I'm a migrant myself here, of course.

I moved here for work, found work.

Found a lady, settled down.

And, you know, that's what capital cities are all about, really -

it's opportunity, commerce, you know?

Lots of people have come here historically over the years

looking for the same sorts of opportunities.

And a lot of people have made Wales their home as a result of that.

And that's sort of, you know, the story of a river mouth, really.

Big port towns bring people in. Bring people together.

By the end of the 19th century, Cardiff had transformed

from one of the smallest towns in Wales to the largest.

And its port was handling more coal than anywhere else in the world.

On the eve of the First World War in 1913,

coal exports reached their peak at over ten million tonnes.

And at Cardiff's grand coal exchange,

the world's first million-pound cheque was signed.

People came from all over the Empire

and beyond to work on the ships and in the vast docks.

And many never left.

This is the Red Sea House in the Butetown area of the city.

It's home to a group of men who came to Wales in the '50s and '60s,

from Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti and the Yemen.

What was Cardiff like when you first arrived in the '50s?

By the 1940s, the city was home to people from all over the world.

With over 50 nationalities living side-by-side in Cardiff's Tiger Bay,

including one of the oldest Muslim communities in Britain.

And these old seamen remember Cardiff as a very different place.

IN OWN LANGUAGE:

From the mean streets of Cardiff, they sailed the seven seas.

Between them, there's hardly a continent on Earth

they haven't been to.

While they travelled the world,

their families remained in their home countries.

But what money they earned would be sent back.

Cardiff became their home.

IN ENGLISH:

But when they retired,

many chose not to return to live with their loved ones.

Preferring instead to settle here,

alongside the men they shared their adventures with.

At the end of the Second World War, demand for coal slumped,

and international markets were lost as other countries

developed their own steel industries.

Shipping trade was increasingly lost to container ports,

and by the 1960s, coal exports in Cardiff had virtually ceased.

The docks are still here,

but they tell the story of a very different economy.

Where once we exported the coal that fuelled the Industrial Revolution,

now we import petrol and diesel for our cars.

Welsh iron and steal once left these docks to help build the new world,

now we export our waste for recycling.

Quite hard now to imagine what this place was like

when Cardiff was such a big coal port.

But it was coal that made Cardiff,

and it was coal that built this port, essentially.

But now, that's all changed.

This is a service sector economy,

and Cardiff Bay is all restaurants, pubs and coffee shops.

But it wasn't always like this.

By the early 1980s, Cardiff Bay had become

a wasteland of crumbling docks and tidal mudflats.

The people of Cardiff Bay suffered too.

The community where so many of the dockworkers had lived

became blighted by poverty and unemployment.

It was decided that something had to be done

to breathe new life into the area.

The plan was to flood the mudflats

and create a 200-hectare freshwater lagoon.

A barrage was built across the mouth of the Taff,

and Cardiff Bay would become a model for urban regeneration.

When I first came here in the mid-'70s, I suppose,

this area was just a reliced area.

You could see the vestiges of the Industrial Revolution

gradually disappearing or collapsing,

and being left where they fell.

Pete Gough works with Natural Resources Wales,

and has been involved with the Taff and the Bay for over 25 years.

I think it's nice they've left some of the residual bits

of the port here like this.

It reminds everyone exactly what the heritage of this place is.

While remnants of the past remain,

little is left of the natural environment.

The mudflats were a Site of Special Scientific Interest,

hosting over 8,000 wintering wading birds.

When the plan was approved, that habitat was flooded.

And with a price tag of £200 million, many questioned

if the development was worth the environmental and financial cost.

Today, the Bay is strictly regulated, and around £6 million per

year is spent on maintaining this man-made landscape.

The Cardiff Bay Barrage Act specified a water quality standard

for Cardiff Bay.

It's probably one of the most trying standards

in terms of water quality I've ever heard of.

They had to ensure that dissolved oxygen never fell below

five milligrams per litre, anywhere, ever.

Most environmental standards are set in terms of percentiles,

you know, 98% of the time, it mustn't be this or that.

But here it is absolute, 100%. That's a real challenge.

For fish, one of the most crucial parts of Cardiff Bay

is contained within the barrage itself.

The whole of the River Taff and the River Ely,

and its salmon and sea trout and eel and lamprey populations,

all depend on that structure working to its design specification.

Since the barrage was completed in 2001, this fish pass has allowed

migratory fish species to pass from the saltwater of the Bristol Channel

into the freshwater of the Bay, before continuing upriver.

It's estimated that every year,

up to 600 salmon travel through the pass.

How do you know so precisely that those fish are coming through?

They travel through a fish-counting system.

Which is called a Vaki system.

It consists of parallel plates,

and the fish swim through those plates.

And as they do so, they intercept infrared beams.

An object passing through it triggers a count,

but also produces a profile image of whatever triggered that count.

Work has been done all the way up the Taff to allow fish

to return to the river.

The old industrial weirs have been modified with fish ladders,

and the river has been stocked with farmed fish.

Some of those fish were fitted with radio tags,

and in 2013, one of them, salmon 66,

was tracked as far north as Merthyr.

Those stocked fish are breeding, and for the first time in 200 years,

salmon are spawning in the upper reaches of the Taff.

Everyone recognises that salmon indicate good environmental quality,

and that's nearly always true.

So, knowing that salmon are thriving in the River Taff

is really important to the residents of Merthyr Tydfil

and Pontypridd and Cardiff.

Their river is clean enough for these fish to do well again.

This is a genuine example of a river that was biologically dead,

and today it's thriving.

And that's a testament to an enormous amount of work

by a lot of people.

It's testament to the decline and demise of heavy industry

as well, of course, and we shouldn't forget that.

But the river itself has done the job at the end of the day.

It just shows you how resilient nature can be.

With the river and the Bay behind me,

I'm heading through the barrage and into the Bristol Channel.

This is it, this is the end of the River Taff's journey,

and it's the end of my journey.

Through a giant pair of lock gates.

I've reached the end of an amazing journey down an incredible river.

This is it.

This is the source of the River Taff.

The story of the Taff is the story of South Wales.

It's pretty wild out here.

From the ancient summits of the Brecon Beacons,

the river flows through a landscape shaped by over 200 years of history.

It wasn't just of huge significance to Merthyr,

it was of huge significance to the world, essentially.

The river has borne witness to a vast amount of change.

Iron and coal brought people to the Taff, but together they killed it.

The river, in those days, would be black.

Now, with people and nature working in harmony,

the river runs clear once more.

The Taff is alive.

I'm back to where I started,

my favourite fishing spot on my favourite river,

in the centre of Cardiff.

Oh, it's a rock!

When that reel goes...!

And this glorious, abused and resilient little river

has one last surprise for me.

I do not believe it!

It's a salmon.

Ooh, he knows he's hooked!

Please stay on.

Aw, come on now!

Gently, gently.

Oh...

Blimey, this is the worst bit now, you see,

in amongst these shallow rocks...

Oh, it's a good fish!

Come on, now, get his head up.

Keep his head up. Head up.

Turn back.

Oh, now, you're joking, man!

Come on.

I don't believe it.

I do not believe it.

What a fish.

That's not long out the sea.

It's still very silver.

And he's on his way back upstream to spawn.

Do you know, that was a tremendous fight.

I'm shaking like a leaf.

It's amazing - we're in the middle of Cardiff,

and here I am, cradling the king of fish.

This river was declared officially dead,

and if you're looking for any other sign that this river has truly,

truly made the most remarkable comeback of all rivers,

it's this fish that I'm cradling right here.

Cast-iron evidence that this river is back from the dead.

Thank you very much, my friend. I'm going to give you a little kiss.

Good luck on your journey.

Say hello to Merthyr.

There it goes.

Salmon from the city centre.

What a river.