There's More Than One Way To Get To Cardiff | Tom Ruddy

After recently moving house, one of the first things on my mind was how close is the nearest river...

Turns out it's pretty close. In fact the River Ely is a short drive from the house, and there's a tributary to it that's even closer.

The river doesn't exactly look the most exciting, and it was hard to find any guide description of it which usually confirms this theory.
But not knowing what's coming up also adds an element of adventure, and it would a shame not to go exploring on a day off.

We would be starting in Pontyclun and finshing at Cardiff White Water Centre.

It had rained overnight which means there would be at least a little flow to help us get down, and although at first I thought it might take an hour or 2, measuring the map actually revealed it would be more like 6 hours... but we were committed by this point.

There was enough water to float down on SUPs with only a few shallow bits, definitely worth waiting for the rain though. The biggest issue was overhanging trees, and a few "should have been portages" that we kind of muscled through.

The occasional sound of a rapid around the corner kept things interesting, but most of the time the trip consisted of fairly laid back paddling and dodging trees now and then.

As we got closer to Cardiff, the water became deeper and the river got wider. This meant flat water and stronger head winds, which aren't the most welcome things after 4 hours on the water.

By the time we got to CIWW we were glad for a warm drink and a change of clothes. 

The total journey took us just over 5 hours, and ended up being 30km in total. The weather wasn't really perfect, so I'm looking forward to doing the trip again when the Sun's shining.