Day 1/12
Mile 18/340
Sunburn 10/10
Solid first day on the Wye. Made good time on the first section and had a good play on some gentle rapids. Not too sore just yet but on other days I’ll will be covering twice as many miles so it’s gonna be a tough time.
I have paddled a lot in the Wye but never this first section and I’ve always thought of it as a clean river but it wasn’t long before we came to our first sewage plant. Only 4% of British rivers meet good environmental standards and 55% of all rivers in England and Wales failing to reach the required good ecological status are polluted by waste water. A massive reason for this is that There are 17,684 licensed sewer overflows across England and Wales, 89% of which discharge into rivers.
Please follow the link to learn more, buy a cool tshirt or donate to surfers against sewage to help keep our rivers and coasts clean.
https://www.sas.org.uk/endsewagepollution/
