'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.'
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 moved to Cardiff seven years ago,
but had no idea it was home to such a special little river.
The Taff runs through the heart of the city.
And in recent years has seen a resurgence in salmon
and other fish species returning to spawn.
It's a fascinating place to fish.
Right, this is my magic box of tricks for today.
I've got a tub of maggots.
And then hopefully in here I've got some floats.
I first started learning to fish when I was four years old.
My grandad bought me a "welcome to coarse fishing" package from Argos.
It had this little red rod, this little steel thing,
so I learnt a lot off my grandad.
A proper waterway, it's never just going to give up its secrets.
The River Taff is such an unlikely river.
It's an urban environment,
and yet you've also got a genuinely clean river
that's got genuinely big fish in it.
Got it. I'm in.
Oh, it looks like a grayling.
Now, these fish will fight to the death.
They are as slippery as butter.
Oh, he's pulled out.
The amount of times that happens, you wouldn't believe it!
This 100 metre stretch of the river here,
I've been fishing it fairly solidly now for about five years,
and I feel that I know it intimately well.
Oh... Yes!
You know, I know that that trio of rocks behind there,
there's a bit of a gutter and it's a really good fish holding area,
I know that there's fish underneath that willow tree over there
and I know that there's fish directly downstream of that big
sort of rocky patch of fast water.
But if you take me out of here...
..I know nothing.
I don't know this river at all.
Upstream of here, I really don't have a clue.
From Cardiff, the Taff stretches north,
running through the industrial heartland
of the South Wales Valleys,
but its story begins high in the Brecon Beacons.
This is one of Britain's most popular national parks,
attracting over four million visitors every year.
And the most well-trodden path of all
is the trail to the top of Pen y Fan.
There are actually two River Taffs amid these hills,
the Fawr and the Fechan - the big and the small -
which come together further downstream.
And here it is, the summit of Pen y Fan,
the highest point in southern Wales,
and it's a very, very popular spot, as you can see.
It is simply stunning.
I can see almost everything out here.
This ridgeline here separates the two main arms
of the Taff Fawr on that side
and then the Taff Fechan down there.
And you can just make out in the far distance, the reservoirs,
and I can even see so far as the Bristol Channel,
so actually right here in this spot,
the whole stretch of the river
is encapsulated in one view.
Marvellous.
I want to follow the Taff from its highest point,
and that's the source of the Taff Fechan.
Oh, hang on. This looks promising.
Goodness me.
I think this could be it, actually.
Oh!
Isn't that just the prettiest thing?
A tiny, tiny little stream.
This is it.
This is the source of the River Taff.
And just in here, if I peel back this moss...
..I can feel the water running over my fingers.
Do you know what? That was actually quite easy!
I was expecting to spend most of the day out here looking for this.
From the Brecon Beacons the two Taffs tumble south,
growing in strength.
On the way, they flow through the heavily industrialised South Wales Valleys.
But the upper Taff is still a wild place,
where people come to lose themselves.
OK, tonight's scenario, then, for this training
is we have a casualty out on the hill...
'The job of finding them again falls to
'the Central Beacons Mountain Rescue Team -
'over 50 volunteers from all walks of life.
'And one who knows this stretch of the river better than most is
'Huw Jones, a civil servant, who's been with the team for 34 years.'
Dave, our navigator, now will pick up a point on the river
that we'll aim for. Right. Get down to the river,
and then that's when the search will start in earnest.
'Tonight, another member of the team is posing as an injured hiker,
'lost somewhere in the valley.'
It's pretty wild out here.
Just looking at the volunteers now, fanning out in their search,
it is pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack.
'The team covers over 1,000 square miles,
'but this uncompromising landscape sits cheek by jowl with the towns
'of the South Wales Valleys, some of the poorest places in the country.'
RADIO: Control send a message, over.
'This presents a unique challenge for the volunteers...'
Hello, Kate.
'..who often find themselves called upon to search for vulnerable individuals -
'so-called despondents...'
'..some of whom don't intend to return.'
We get called to search for people who perhaps have gone off
with the intent of doing the ultimate,
and not coming back themselves.
Our urban searches, where we get called to search for,
as we classify them, vulnerable people,
missing from the valleys towns and communities,
can be up to as many times as we're called up to the Brecon Beacons
here for hill walkers, climbers and bikers.
Is there an underlying social cause? Quite possibly.
Difficult to identify an exact reason for it,
but when you look at the course of the area the Taff flows through,
real strong legacies of mining backgrounds, industrial backgrounds,
ironworks, steelworks,
and is the infrastructure in place there
to help sort of safety net that once it has withdrawn from the area?
I guess is a question to ask, perhaps.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
We like to think that by finding them and
getting them back down off the hill, we're giving them another chance.
The thought of somebody coming out here to commit suicide is...
..is quite a harrowing one, really.
And I think that for people like Huw and the volunteers,
it can't help but change the way you...
you view the countryside in your own back yard.
There is no getting away from the fact that
I am only 45 minutes from a city centre,
I'm only ten minutes away from a town,
but actually out here, right now,
in this forest, in the dark,
with the River Taff behind me, there, making its noise...
..I feel so, so far from home.
And I guess that's the thing about the Taff -
it's 45 miles long, that's it.
Yet, I'll challenge you to find any other river in Britain
that goes through such a varied landscape.
As I push on south, the mountain river has been dammed
to form a series of vast reservoirs.
This is the first sign of the Industrial Revolution
that took place along this river 250 years ago,
a revolution that changed the Taff, Wales and the world.
In the mid-1700s, iron ore was found in abundance
just downstream of here, and an industry was born.
People poured into the valley, but such rapid growth proved lethal -
both for the river and for the local population.
Waste, industrial and human, flowed into the Taff.
Cholera, typhus and dysentery were rife.
To provide clean water, this valley was flooded
around the turn of the 20th century, creating these reservoirs.
'The waters are dark and deep, and I can't resist casting a line.'
Oh, dear me.
Is something wrong with the hook?
No.
Must be a problem on the other end of the rod.
Oh. Yep.
This one is well-hooked, he's not coming off.
There we go. Look at that in the light.
Fantastic little perch.
He's still fighting. Pugnacious animal.
Just look at that.
I mean, he has absolutely engulfed that lure. That is ridiculous.
That has to be the greediest fish in Wales.
You can see, there, that is just built for predation -
big spiky dorsal fin,
armoured gill plates,
beautiful dark stripes down the body,
impossible to see from the top.
Pale underneath, can't be seen if you're underneath it.
If you are a fish of this size or smaller, you are history.
There we go.
Let's pop him back and see if we can find his mum.
I'm approaching Merthyr Tydfil, once the biggest town in Wales.
But on the way, I pass through one of the Taff's best kept secrets.
I'm in the Taff Fechan Nature Reserve
and this has got to be one of the most beautiful pieces
on the whole River Taff.
And I'm here to meet a group of community volunteers that do
more than anyone else to keep this place as stunning as it is.
'It's a magical place
'and Wildlife Trust officer Carys Solman is responsible for keeping it that way.'
Hazel isn't really a tree, it's more of a shrub,
and so, if you chop it completely down it will just all sprout back.
'She grew up just south of here, in Merthyr,
'and leads a team of dedicated local volunteers.'
If you're not from around these parts a lot of people
wouldn't even realise this place is here, would they?
No, loads of people don't.
They don't and lots of local people still are yet to discover it.
It's, yes, a really well-kept secret for Merthyr.
The Gurnos Estate is just up there, Trefechan Estate is just up there,
so it's sort of sandwiched between the two but you'd think
you're in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn't know. Absolutely.
It's a lovely place.
'The river has carved its way through the rock over millennia,
'creating a deep gorge, lined on either side by thick woodland.
'But somehow, a car has ended up in the river.
'There's not much left of it now,
'but fallen trees have become jammed against it, causing a blockage.'
Why is it important to remove it, though, Carys?
Why can't you just leave it where it is?
Um, well, apart from the sort of...
you know, it doesn't look nice,
it does form an obstruction for migrating fish.
We've got trout in here and recently, very recently,
we've started having Atlantic salmon come back up these rivers,
so we want to make it a place for them to come and breed.
A research project was tracking them with radio satellite signal,
and it got this far, and it kind of turned around and left again,
so we are working to make this part of the river more welcoming.
Carys is running things from up top,
Paul's running things from down below.
And I'm stuck in between like a lemon.
Not doing anything!
How's it going, Paul?
Going pretty well so far. Yeah? Yeah.
It's not going to sweep you downstream then?
With a bit of luck, no!
The guy that was here manning the safety rope
which presumably is attached to Paul,
to stop him from disappearing down the river, has gone.
I've got him.
I can't wait to see this out of the river.
There it is. SHE CHEERS
You've been looking at that on all of your walks, haven't you?
It's been annoying me. Oh! Absolutely.
'The volunteers are drawn from Merthyr and the villages around.
'They find peace working in the woods,
'and a cup of tea shared with friends.'
There's a whole world out here
and pick up a log, or look in the river,
and you see something you've never seen before
and suddenly the world's bigger.
'For some in the group, volunteering
'has made a real difference to their lives.'
I needed some sort of outlet cos I've just lost my mother,
and my doctor said I should sort of face it head on.
Then one day I saw this poster,
they're looking for volunteers for the Taff Fechan Nature Reserve.
I thought, "Why not? I'll give that a go."
It helped me a lot cos I could have been sat in the house,
dwelling on things, and probably go on a downward spiral.
If anyone else has gone through the same, I recommend they should get out,
do a bit of voluntary work, or whatever is right for them,
help them get over something that's happened in their lives.
It gives you a lot of strength to carry on.
The River Taff and Merthyr, people associate that with industry
and possibly the river as being maybe polluted
and quite industrial, but if they did just stop
and have a look at the river here,
it is really beautiful and they'd really be surprised, yes.
Just south of the reserve is the confluence of the two Taffs...
..where the Fechan meets the Fawr
in the shadow of the Cefn Coed viaduct.
The contrast at this point is quite remarkable.
Up there it still looks very wild and very natural
but down there,
well...
the hand of man is quite obvious.
This is beginning to look like a river that's being harnessed.
You'd never know,
but this was once one of the greatest industrial sites on Earth -
the Cyfarthfa Ironworks.
People flocked from far and wide to work here.
At its height it employed over 5,000 people.
The waters of the Taff turned a massive 50-foot high waterwheel,
that powered the furnaces.
This is the site of the Cyfarthfa Ironworks.
Oh, it is impressive, isn't it? It is impressive, yes.
'Local historian Chris Parry is going to show me around
'this lost wonder of the industrial age.'
Massive, isn't it? It is. It's 50 feet in total, really.
'Under the control of the pioneering and powerful Crawshay family,
'these works had a profound effect on the modern world.
'But today this is all that remains.'
Six complete blast furnaces.
All dating back from the early 19th century,
and arguably even before that when the works were founded in 1765.
Wow.
You can count on one hand, if that, the amount of sites around the world
that have six complete blast furnaces dating back
to this early period, I mean,
the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
When the furnace at Cyfarthfa started in 1765,
there wasn't a town, really.
Cyfarthfa was Merthyr's first true big success story.
It was Britain's biggest ironworks,
producing more than any other ironworks in Britain,
and arguably the world's largest ironworks,
so it wasn't just of huge significance to Merthyr,
it was of huge significance to the world essentially at this time.
'By the early 1800s,
'Merthyr was responsible for 40% of Britain's iron exports,
'but 100 years later, as the First World War came to an end,
'the works closed, and have since fallen into ruin.'
As you can see, the site is vandalised pretty randomly. Yeah.
Cos kids locally... The local name for it is The Cave,
they don't really know what it is,
and that's partly kind of education's fault overall.
It's how can you expect any younger people to take care
of a site that they have no idea or no knowledge of?
The A470's just there, isn't it? Exactly, yes.
Just behind here, so I've driven past the site
dozens of times myself, up to the Brecon Beacons,
and not even realised I'm driving over an ancient ironworkings.
What was it about this particular site that was
really ideal for ironworking?
Cyfarthfa is at the confluence of two rivers,
the Fawr and the Fechan, and so you're getting two very substantial
rivers flowing into one and you've got a nice access to water then.
The ironstone itself, which Merthyr had in abundance,
coal, which was totally and utterly needed,
and then limestone which again was everywhere
and so you had everything you needed, this kind of
perfect storm of ingredients and it all came together.
So it's fair to say then, Chris, that without the River Taff,
without Merthyr's natural resources and Crawshay's vision,
we probably wouldn't have had a British Industrial Revolution?
I'd argue that. Definitely I'd argue that.
This was one of four massive ironworks in Merthyr.
The flames and smoke from which would have filled this valley.
These furnaces wouldn't stop.
They'd be going every day of the week for years. 24/7. Yes.
Burning pits. Yes.
I bet at night-time down here it must have looked pretty Satanic.
It did. Well, people often compared Merthyr to Pandemonium -
you know, in Milton's poems.
Pandemonium and hell and things like that.
People couldn't tell night from day when you came to Merthyr.
Seriously. You must have been able to see this place for miles. Yes.
Yes, you could. As soon as you came over the valley, it was like,
it was just like hell, like you said.
'The conditions would have been at their most hellish
'inside the warren of narrow tunnels that lead to each of the furnaces.
'Today they're cold and dark, but
'over 100 years ago it would have been a totally different place.'
A very knowledgeable guy who wrote several books on the iron industry
called the men who were tapping out the furnaces
"cycloptic workmen" and what he meant by that is,
they were kind of always closing the one eye,
kind of struggling to keep their eyes open
and see what they were doing in work cos the light coming from
the molten mixture and from the fire was so intense.
Deafness, blindness, all these things were regular occurrences
working in an ironworks, because the light was so intense,
the noise was so intense, the heat was so intense.
All of these things could really take a toll on a person.
It's difficult to overstate the legacy of this place,
and the explosion of industry that happened here 250 years ago,
but it wasn't only metal that poured out of this valley.
The power of the ironmasters created such brutal inequality
that Merthyr became a hotbed for social change.
Workers' unions, the Labour movement and socialism were forged here,
with Merthyr electing Keir Hardie as the first ever
Labour Member of Parliament.
It's hard to imagine but the iron that was made here
built our empire, it built our industry, railways,
fought our wars, and here it is, just...
underneath a main road,
crumbling, litter strewn,
forgotten.
It's hard not to feel a sense of sadness about that, really.
It's an absolutely remarkable place.
In recent years, like many valleys towns,
Merthyr and its people have fallen on hard times,
blighted by unemployment and ill-health.
But to come here on a fine summer's day,
with the flies dancing on the river, it's hard to see why.
With the heavy industry all but gone,
the waters of the Taff run clear once more.
A funny old place to start a fishing trip, Dan, though,
with the city centre bus stop over there and
in the middle of a car park.
You do get some people who say, "Oh, there's no fish in there,
"it's too polluted," and stuff like that, but no.
They say that and you catch a fish straight in front of them. Right!
Yeah. But there's plenty of fish in here
and I am sure we'll have a good couple today.
Dan Popp is a Merthyr boy and top trout fisherman.
He's seen first-hand how the river has recovered.
I'm pretty nervous, actually. I'm not going to lie to you.
This water is considerably faster than I'm used to.
I'll follow you.
We have to jump over a fence here now, mind.
Oh, right. Brilliant. And down onto the river bank.
Yes, put the bag down here. Yes, over we go.
It's a bit high, mate.
No!
Just watch your footing, for any big boulders.
There's a big boulder here. Steady on.
You ever fallen in, Dan? Yes.
I think I'm all right, Dan, but...
I'm not so macho that I won't ask you for your hand if I need it.
It's a funny old feeling, Dan,
to be effectively stood, wedged between an A road
and a car park in...
You know, fishing in the middle of a town, basically. Yes.
It's surprising sometimes what an urban river can produce, isn't it?
'Dan hasn't just witnessed a change in the river,
'but in Merthyr too.'
The industries had all gone, there was nothing here
and it got a bit of a reputation then,
and it stuck unfortunately.
But the town itself has changed incredibly.
You've got to look around us here.
Now you've got a new college there,
and the town itself has been redone and they're still improving it.
I'm in.
Can you feel anything shaking? Serious, mate, serious.
Oh, that's a big fish. Don't leave the line go slack.
Keep tension all the time. Reel in a bit.
Otherwise the fish is bullying you, you're not bullying the fish.
Oh, right, got you. Not too tight, though.
If it needs to run, leave it run.
Oh, Dan! Watch out for them boulders.
The fish is bullying you now. BLEEP!
Oh, I'm shaking. Please stay on, please stay on.
Keep his head above the water. This is brown trouser time, mate.
Got it. Yes, get in!
HE LAUGHS
Nice work. Nice fish, buddy. Buddy!
Oh, he's beautiful.
That is, by far and away, the biggest wild brown trout
I've ever had. He's lovely.
It certainly is. He's wild by name and nature.
Just look at those markings, those iridescent spots,
running the whole length down him.
You know, sometimes you'll catch these fish and,
you know, you might get half a dozen or a dozen spots
but you see here it's gone all the way down
and that's the sign of a clean, clear river.
It has to create that incredible camouflage,
just to survive in a place like this, and he's obviously done
very well, hasn't he, cos he's got to a big old weight?
There it is.
That is absolutely extraordinary.
You don't know what's on your doorstep, some people, do they?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
There we are. One last look.
People would travel a very long way for a fish like that.
Wait till it gives that kick.
There he goes. You can feel that.
He's pretty strong, he's going.
Oh, mate! Put it there, son.
Thank you so much, Dan. Thank you so, so much.
Wow.
'Next time, I see how coal has shaped the Taff Valley...'
How is he holding that with one hand?
'..I fish a stretch of the river that once ran black...'
The fishing is just unbelievable.
'..and get to see the face of modern mining.'
Goodness me! Wow.
'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.'
HE CHUCKLES 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...'
Damn! '..from source to sea.'
Salmon from the city centre.
What a river.
This is the story of the River Taff.
I grew up fishing the still waters of the Norfolk Fens,
a long way from the Taff Valley,
but my grandfather was from Yorkshire
and spent his life working in the coal mines.
My grandad had an immensely hard time down the pits.
Throughout his life, he always carried
these big, white handkerchiefs and he would cough up coal dust
into his handkerchief.
I remember even as a kid thinking, "Why is my grandad coughing black?"
I felt so far removed, really, from what he'd done.
Then as he got into his later years
and he started to suffer from ill health,
I remember going to see him
in hospital and I'd been working in a pub.
I was quite tired and I thought he wasn't watching.
He was an exceptionally tough man
and I rested my head on the end of his bed
and he said, "Is thee tired?"
He said it in a way that wasn't sort of, "Oh, are you tired, my grandson?
"I hope you're not tired."
It was very much in that kind of, "Cos you shouldn't be.
"Get your head off my bed," basically.
And, um...
it was the first time I'd ever seen his knee,
in the hospital bed before he passed away
and I remember it was peeking out the side of the bed sheet.
And it was tattooed black...
..with coal.
You don't forget stuff like that.
I'm halfway on my journey down the River Taff
and I'm heading south from Merthyr Tydfil.
On this stretch of the river,
it was coal that shaped almost 200 years of history.
The industry created communities
employing hundreds of thousands of people
packed into terraced houses on the banks of the river.
WHISTLE HOOTS
The Taff was a vital resource.
It fed the canals that carried this black gold down to the sea.
But water from the river was also used to wash coal,
resulting in dust and lethal chemicals entering the watercourse.
To travel down the Taff today,
you have to look carefully to see any signs of coal mining.
The slag heaps have been grassed over
and the pit wheels dismantled.
To find out more about the industry that transformed the Taff,
I'm heading up one of its tributaries,
the Rhondda River.
This was once the Lewis Merthyr Colliery,
but it's now the Rhondda Heritage Park.
It's part of history.
Even for me now - I finished, um...
I'd have said a couple of years ago - it's 20 years ago
since I finished in the pits.
Ivor England and Graham Williams
spent almost 80 years underground between them.
So that's what it's all about? That's what it's all about.
A lot of lives were lost
getting that stuff up from under the ground, innit?
Hmm?
The coal from pits like this fuelled the British Empire,
but it came at a heavy price.
Waste from the collieries was washed into the rivers.
It's estimated that in a single year,
over 100,000 tonnes of colliery waste was dumped into the Taff.
But for men like Ivor and Graham,
mining was a way of life.
This, in my opinion,
is what all men who started work remember.
You stood in the queue and waited till the time came.
To go into what? To go in the cage. To go into that?! Yeah.
The cage was going down, coming up...
I assumed that was just for the truck!
Shift men were still coming up from the pit.
The banksman, as they called him,
he's responsible to make sure you go in, come out.
Bring it down.
Press the button - "Ding, ding, ding!"
"Pff-shew!" Down it should go.
Ivor and Graham were both teenagers when they first went underground,
descending almost 500 metres to pit bottom.
I remember the first time I got out the cage,
seeing horses for the first time that I'd heard so much about.
Horses were stabled underground, weren't they? Aye.
They came up once a year.
Life in the mines was tough,
dark, dirty and dangerous,
but a camaraderie was formed between the men
who shared an equally dark sense of humour.
I can remember when I was about 18 and I went on the coal first, Ivor,
I was going to a rough place, in the rib.
It was all crushing and cracking and everything was moving
and two of the old collies there show up, and he said,
"Do you think he'll come out of there?"
The one said, "Maybe a man would have a chance,
"but not a bloody boy, like that. No chance at all."
One said, "You courting?" "Yeah, beautiful girl."
"Blonde girl, she'll look lovely in black." Oh, God!
I was going in there shaking.
Good grief. A lot of black humour. Yeah.
I can remember going home and my mother saying,
"Oh, look at your hands."
All blisters and cuts and things like that.
"What's the matter with your stomach?
"What's the matter with your stomach?" I'd been laughing so much.
The deep mineshafts here have been capped,
but the lifts remain
and now simulate the sensation of going underground.
The signal to the winder
and we'd be on our way.
Normally this would be about nine metres a second
and by now it would take your breath away,
your stomach would be left in your mouth.
I know that we're not going underground
and I still feel nervous. You would get used to it.
Yeah, well, Ivor's behind you! LAUGHTER
I'd be nervous with Ivor on my shoulder!
Now we're down, lads. I can open the door, all right?
The tunnels of the working pit would have stretched for almost 30 miles,
but with the help of ex-miners,
a section of this old mine has been recreated.
This is where we show you how to use explosives in a coal mine.
Right. I'll see what I can show you.
Cor, it's like TNT from the cartoons, isn't it?
A bit more powerful than dynamite!
In one of those,
you put an electronic detonator with these wires attached.
The shotsman then would just connect that to a little battery.
Go on, have a go, Will, you can press the button.
Of course, nothing's going to happen today.
No. Of course, it's all...
LOUD BANG
God's sake!
THEY LAUGH
The floor did shake then. No, you must have imagined that.
It did shake. I didn't know it was charged up.
I...! Yes.
'Today, these proud men spend their days telling visitors
'about the industry that shaped their lives.'
Pneumatic pick, "puncher", we call it.
'The tools they used are now artefacts in a museum.'
So you can have that.
How is he holding that with one hand?
Working down here in the heat, the dust and the dark took its toll.
Injuries and death were all too common,
with tens of thousands killed underground.
But even those who survived still carry the scars.
You've got pneumatic tools vibrating and shaking
and it breaks the nerve endings in your fingers. Right.
So I haven't got it to that extent, actually...
..but some men who worked in the pits,
they can barely pick up a pint.
It's like my dad -
he had it quite badly. He had to pick up a pint with two hands.
For me, as incredible as this place looks,
as authentic as you guys can get it,
the most authentic thing in this museum right now is you
and once your generation passes on,
who's going to be there to tell the stories?
I tell the kids now,
I say, "Look, talk to us,
"we're like dinosaurs - we'll be extinct shortly."
So Ivor, an authentic coal miner, and I was.
But, yeah, we are a dying breed.
BOISTEROUS CHATTER
There are men here to tell the story of the tremendous social culture
that built up around coal mining.
The life in the pubs, the life in the clubs,
they played in the band.
All these things were there,
all coming out of the miner's pay, didn't it?
A miner's determination to make life easier.
Education.
Learning.
There was an optimism - "Things are going to get better."
There was a belief in people - "Things are going to get better."
I wouldn't say that's now. That's not something you can replicate?
I don't think people are going to say
things are going to get better, no.
There's a disillusionment. We know what we come from,
but the difficulty is finding where we're going.
Coal mining created the South Wales valleys,
but it killed the River Taff.
This film shows what the river was like in the town of Pontypridd
during the 1950s.
FILM NARRATOR: What's he after?
Has he caught anything?
No fish, I'm afraid, here.
No, not in 1956.
While the Taff perished, the communities on its banks flourished.
Rugby, chapels, choirs,
working men's clubs,
were born out of the pits.
And some still persist.
BRASS BAND MUSIC PLAYS
Founded here in the Rhondda Valley in 1880,
this is one of the oldest colliery bands in Wales.
Ivor once played the trombone for the band,
but there are few miners here today.
I think 18 of the men, of the 25 men in this band
when I started work were working underground,
including the band conductor.
Wales and the United Kingdom have got a great tradition of bands
that have been associated with collieries.
They closed the last ones in the early '90s
and ever since then, the bands have been reliant on themselves
to kind of reinvent themselves,
find a new way of sustaining themselves
without the support of the collieries
and indeed, without the influx of members from the colliery as well.
A lot of the members are young, a lot of the members are female.
It's a different world.
The challenge is now that loss of employment.
That was the thing that kept everybody together,
that was the thing that was the cohesive unit in the community
and we don't have that any more.
We train the kids and as I did, they go away, they go to university.
They don't necessarily come back
and it would be the employment that would draw them back,
so that's the constant challenge for us, really.
THEY PLAY Cwm Rhondda
Do you think the brass bands, then,
have helped to sort of keep the community together
and give you guys something to sort of bond around?
Um, yeah, cos my father, he was...
well, he is a musician as well, so he's passed on that to me as well.
My brother, he's also a musician as well
and he's gone through the brass bands as well,
so I think it's a great opportunity for communities to bond
and get to know each other.
These bands were hugely important to the life of the colliery
and following the miners' strike of the 1980s,
it was the bands who led the men back to work.
Ivor was there, proudly playing his trombone.
The bells were ringing in the church there,
all the media were there,
we lined up in front of all the people -
huge, hundreds of people.
I was playing the trombone, I was on the corner there
and we marched up the roadway.
Then the manager shook hands with us all
and down the pit I went.
THEY SING
BRASS BAND MUSIC PLAYS
How can you not be moved by this?
It's, um...
It's absolutely beautiful.
This music carries the sadness and the pride
of an industry brought to its knees.
The collapse of coal mining in Wales left thousands of miners unemployed
and many Valleys communities broken.
I'm rejoining the Taff in Pontypridd.
I've coming to meet Paul Jenkins,
an ex-miner and now captain of the Welsh fly-fishing team.
The river in those days would be black,
absolutely black.
If you put your hand in the water, you wouldn't be able to see it
three inches below the surface.
Is that right? Most of the time.
In fact, we used to look forward to...
..the two-week miners' holidays,
cos the river would clear a little bit then for those two weeks.
Really? Yeah, just for those two weeks.
We're in the centre of town, fishing for grayling.
That looks good.
That cast deserved a fish.
Yep. WILL SIGHS
If the fish takes again, just lift gently into it, rather than strike.
Yes! Yes!
Oh! It's another grayling, I think. First grayling.
First grayling on the fly...
Oh, and that's what you get for talking about fish
that you haven't got into the bank.
Nearly your first grayling. Yeah, yeah, NEARLY my first grayling.
Right, your turn, I think.
I knew he was going to be a lot better than me at this,
but whenever he sees a rising fish, he's on it straight away.
He's in!
Whoa, brilliant.
Here it comes. Grayling. Grayling.
Fantastic. There you go.
He's not more than a year or two old.
There's a lot of grayling this size in the river this year. Right.
Which means the last couple of years have been good spawning years,
so in a couple of years' time, these fish will be up over a pound.
Fantastic fish. Gorgeous.
He's away. He's away.
Paul spent decades working underground.
But for him, it all came to an end with the 1984 miners' strike.
Tell me what life was like on the strike.
People really struggled, you know?
At the time, I was there with my father.
My mother had died a couple of years before.
And he was a collier, I was a collier,
so we had two colliers in my house
and there was no money coming in at all
for the 12 months.
It was tough.
It was really tough.
ANGRY SHOUTING
The miners' strike saw violent clashes between miners and police,
conflict within coal mining towns themselves
and desperate times for miners and their families.
We were relying in those days on the generosity of the community.
And I think it became apparent
that the strike was more than just about closing pits.
The ultimate goal, I'm sure, of the government at the time
was to defeat not only the NUM
but the unions in total,
and over the years since the strike, they have, they've achieved that.
While the end of heavy industry was devastating
for the people of the Valleys,
it was a lifeline for the Taff.
Without the coal dust from the collieries,
the river began to run clear again
and the fish began to return. They say every cloud has a silver lining.
And yeah, we lost the pits, but look at this.
I don't know what's for the best. Perhaps it was a blessing.
I've just got to watch that pink indicator on the surface
and when that goes, I strike.
That's the theory, anyway.
There's the salmon again.
Did you get that?
Not paying attention and he's in again!
THEY LAUGH
Yes, get in. You've got him.
Oh, that's a lovely fish.
That's how they're able to turn so sharply,
that massive, massive sail dorsal fin.
I bet 30 years ago when you were still working in the pits,
you'd never imagine you'd catch a fish like this.
No, no, certainly not grayling.
They will only really survive in clean water,
so that's an indication that this river has recovered.
Right, let's get him back in.
Ooh, he's a good fish!
Take your time now, cos there's a very light leader on it.
That's a trout, innit? This is definitely the best fish of the day.
Oh, without a doubt. Oh, it's a trout.
Oh, it IS a trout! A big trout.
Nearly there. Oh, there's a salmon!
WILL CHUCKLES Where are we going?
I'm playing him by hand now, you better get him.
He's still on. He's still on.
I can't see where he is. I've got the hook in my hand!
Ah!
This is getting worse!
All right, all right, we're getting under control now.
How is that fish still on?
Right, stop playing games now, Will.
Get him in the net, then, get him to the surface.
There we go. Ah, here he comes.
Way! THEY LAUGH
We did not deserve that fish!
Oh, my goodness me! Look at the colours on that.
Wow, look at that.
What would you give me for that, 2lb, maybe?
Getting on for two, getting on for two.
There you are, you can let him go, if you like.
I would love to let him go.
It's been 30 years since the majority of the pits closed...
..but there is still coal beneath these hills.
Ten miles back upriver, coal is once again coming out of the Taff Valley.
But it's a far cry from the deep mines of the last century.
What do you think, Will?
That is unbelievable.
Ffos-y-fran, on the ridge above Merthyr Tydfil,
is the biggest open-cast coal mine in Britain.
How deep is that, Denzil?
It's 165 metres. 165 metres?
Denzil Hopkins has been working here since the operation began in 2007.
We're just going down into the mine now.
There is a stigma attached to this sort of mining, isn't there?
Yeah. People say it's dirty,
that we shouldn't be reliant on fossil fuels any more,
that we should be trying to move on
and look for more sustainable, greener energy. Yeah.
And until we can get this greener energy,
or until we can find another alternative fuel,
we've got to have coal.
Concerns over climate change
mean the age of coal is drawing to a close.
But the UK is still heavily reliant on coal.
Even with mines like these, we still import 80% of the coal we burn.
And this mine is a big employer in a valley that needs jobs.
Over 200 staff work on site.
Most of the coal from here is either sent to be burned
in Aberthaw Power Station or for steel production in Port Talbot,
supporting thousands more jobs.
Whatever your views,
it's hard not to be impressed by the scale of this operation.
That is quite an intimidating piece of machinery.
Operating this 250-tonne excavator
is one of the most skilled jobs on site
and at the controls is Brian Wilkins.
Will, if you just want to press the top button and lift the ladder up.
Right. We're all ready to go.
This is a hell of a vehicle.
There we go.
No way back now.
WILL GASPS AND CHUCKLES
Cor, Brian, incredible feeling of power, is it?
It can be, yeah,
but it's just like getting into my car in the morning coming to work.
What car do you drive?! Ha, just a Ford Focus.
THEY CHUCKLE
There are four of these huge machines on this site,
plus a dozen smaller diggers,
filling 28 massive dump trucks.
How much does each pass weigh?
Round about 25 tonnes.
25 tonnes? So there's 100 tonnes of rock going in that?
In one load, yeah.
You're quite delicate with it, really.
Yeah, it's just cos you're, like, doing it so much,
you spend so much time doing it,
it just comes natural, really. Right.
Yeah, it just comes natural.
Do you want a go? I'd love a go.
You're not going to let me have a go, are you?
I would, but I don't know whether they would.
On an average week, man and machine
can move around 200,000 cubic metres of rock to reach the coal.
We've got it really easy compared to what the miners had years ago.
I've got all my comfort in here - radio, air conditioning.
Yeah. Everything, really. Yeah.
And you're digging, one man... Yeah.
..shifting, what, 100 tonnes in less than five minutes?
'In the past eight years, over six million tonnes
'of high-quality steam coal has been mined from here.
'From the bottom of the hole, you can see the distinct seams,
'the riches of the South Wales Coalfield laid bare.'
That's an old pillar, that's part of an old pillar.
'But it isn't only coal the miners have unearthed.'
So right now, Denzil, I'm standing in
effectively an old coal mine? Yes.
So not that long ago, there would have been people down here
working on their hands and knees with tools? Yes.
Just with a pick and shovel. Right.
And here we are now with the sunshine on our backs.
Sunshine miners.
Sunshine miners!
Before the open-cast mining began here,
the mountain was strewn with dozens of old mineshafts.
Look at that. That would have been still in, wouldn't it? Yeah.
Cor, it's mad to think, isn't it, Denzil,
that people trusted their life in that piece of wood?
They depended on that piece of wood for their lives.
And you look at how bent that has become. Yeah.
You're stopping the weight of all of those hundreds of metres of rock
and coal from crashing down on your head with a piece of wood
that I can hold the width of with just one hand.
It's, um... It's absolutely mind-blowing, it's amazing.
It's amazing. It IS amazing.
Today, with the latest technology
and by literally moving the mountain,
these miners are able to extract almost every last ounce of coal.
But there is another side to this open-cast operation.
As well as removing the coal,
the owners also have to put right a landscape
that has been exploited for over 100 years.
So what's happened here?
We've just restored it all the way from the outer edge there,
restored it all back. Yeah?
Last year, we baled hay on here.
There was hay baled off here, you know.
Three years ago, this was the same as that hole over there? Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm proud of the fact that I've been part
of not only the way we're taking the coal out,
but the way we're putting the ground back. Yeah.
Coal mining has changed beyond recognition.
An industry that once choked the Taff
is now subjected to strict environmental controls
to put right the wrongs of the past.
For centuries, our insatiable demand for coal drew people to this valley.
Communities were created and the environment was changed forever.
The guts of this landscape have been torn right out of this valley.
I can't imagine a place that's been exploited
to such an extent as this place has been.
So, so much wealth.
And yet...
it's all been flushed downstream and gone elsewhere.
While the industry and much of the wealth it created may have gone,
the people and their pride are still here.
'Next time, I'm heading to the city.'
This river is completely hidden.
'I meet people who have fallen in love with the river.'
On three, yeah?
One...!
THEY YELL
'But as I approach the end of my journey,
'the Taff has one final surprise.'
I do not believe it!
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.
Damn!
Downstream lean.
Well done. C plus. You didn't end up upside down, that's good enough.
Honestly, those rapids felt faster than they looked.
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.
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
than 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 cold 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.