By the River

Ever changing Cardiff Bay

The River Taff was just visible from my bedroom window I could not actually see the river but knew it was there but the whole river thing always intrigued me growing up until I was old enough for it to become my playground.

Has a youngster I always wondered why sometimes all I would see was mud and then water it was not until the whole tide thing was explained to me and how dangerous it was to play around there that I understood. Not like, I listen to my parents because soon as I was allowed to play a bit further from my front door I was straight around the corner to look at the river.

At some time in junior school, there was a lesson about the Taff and where I always thought the river was topped up by the tide, no it wasn’t. It was explained to me, the river-started way up somewhere in the Brecon Beacons with water that fell on the mountains, first I heard about mountains and the Brecon Beacons. To friends and myself going around the ‘Bank’ was a big part of growing–up giving hours of fun. The discovery of the bank gave me a taste for river exploration and adventure it was somewhere you were never bored.

If you needed a ball, a walk along the tide-line would possibly throw up one or two nine times out of ten. That was owing to some kid up river losing their ball in the river. Fishing was always popular, with a hand line or rod with some taking it more serious than others not much you could do with eels. There was swimming which was not the healthiest of options with the state of the river but that didn’t stop us with a bit of mud larking thrown in for fun.

Earlier I mentioned hours of fun but it was more like days, weeks, months, years of fun growing up because it was ever changing with the different tides and seasons. We built many things like rafts and dens, lit fires, and climb trees without a care of health and safety even if we knew what it was about not forgetting a bit of gully jumping.

There was nothing better on a hot summers evening than sitting watching the power of the tide coming in something I miss but today the Taff is no longer tidal after the building of the barrage. When I was a teenager, I had purchased an inflatable dinghy the 2-man type and sometimes I would just drift with the tide keeping an eye out for nutters with air rifles. Then there was the leisurely walk along the riverbank from Clarence Road Bridge around to the Esplanade. The river back than was quiet but for the odd speedboat now, there are water taxis, excursion boats, rowing club, kids in sailing boats learning to sail because now it’s Cardiff Bay.

It may have lost some of that old style beauty I loved so much but to me it’s still beautiful and every chance I get I take the journey from Cardiff Castle along the Taff to Cardiff Bay via the water taxi.