Wild swimmers in the river Taff

Another hot night, but not so hot that it stopped me from sleeping, and another day at 29C. I did some sound editing in the morning before cooking lunch. It was too hot to eat outdoors until the evening. My afternoon walk took me up-river on the east side as far as Llandaff North bridge and back. There were a dozen or so people swimming and jumping in the water around Llandaff Weir, four times less than than the numbers using the waters around Blackweir Bridge as a playground. 

From Llandaff Weir up-stream there's no gradient up to the next weir and at this time of year the flow of water is poor and the river is for the most part shallow, and this weir is a much steeper drop of two metres, not so friendly for water play as Blackweir. The Council has posted safety warnings either side of the bridge saying it's dangerous, which is entirely true after prolonged rain, but in summer time it's impossible to prevent people from using it was a water park. 

Cardiff Council no longer maintains and outdoor lidos, so it's not surprising that people take advantage of exposed stretches of river bed as pebbly beaches. Kids jump off the bridge into the one area which is deep enough by the fish ladder, and upstream where water is deep enough, they jump off overhanging tree branches. Seaside beaches are bound to be crowded, but with far less people able to go abroad to swim in the sea or in some fancy holiday resort pool, wild swimming in the Taff is a compensatory adventure. I just hope the water isn't too polluted with toxins.

This evening, in no mood to write much or think, I binge watched all four remaining episodes of Baptiste. It gave much food for thought about the rise of far right wing political movements in Eastern Europe, and portrayed the radicalisation of an English diplomat's two sons, manipulated by very clever extremist able, like the best of conjurers to misdirect people into seeing what they thought they were looking for. The end of the affair was brutal and to my mind hyper-violent. I'm not sure if any of the injured parties could have survived the assaults portrayed, and yet they did, to round off the story. Too much blunt force trauma and stab wounds to my mind.