Guest post by Richard Thomas, Tidy Towns officer for Ceredigion. 
After several frantic weeks of planning, the first Teifi Challenge event started on Friday 23 September and continued through until late in the evening on Sunday 25 September.
The idea behind the event was to attempt to gather volunteers from Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire and undertake a cleanup from the source to the sea on the river Teifi. This proved to be a bigger challenge than first expected as the Teifi is 75 miles long and runs through rural, unpopulated, countryside. Nevertheless the event turned out to be great success with enthusiastic volunteers coming from far and wide to help out over the weekend. The Challenge also attracted a great deal of publicity and press from local newspapers, Radio Cymru, Radio Wales and S4C.
The event launch took place in Cardigan outside Fforest coffee shop on the banks of the river. Elin Jones Ceredigion AM gave a short speech on the importance of the work that would be taking place. Also attending the launch were a large group of volunteers as well as several dignitaries such as Cardigan Mayor, Catrin Myles, Ian Stoker, Deputy Mayor and the former Environment Minister Jane Davidson. The volunteers then began the hard work of collecting rubbish which was in every place imaginable. A massive amount of litter was collected from the river banks and Prince Charles Quay as well as a huge pile of metal from the mud flats.
Following on from the initial success of the launch event, over 200 volunteers from all over the three counties, worked tirelessly all weekend. Although every volunteer gave their all, some noteworthy events to mention are the Ieuenctid Cambria Youth clean up on Canadian Canoes in the Pontrhydfendigaid and Tregaron area, Ysgol Dyffryn Teifi and Llandysul Paddlers clean up on white water rafts, Canadian Canoes and kayaks and in particular the joint clean up that Clwb Rhwyfo Crannog, Cardigan Rowing Club, BICA surf and Walkin on Water surf school organised. The four organisations got together on the Sunday afternoon and proceeded to remove tonnes of metal and rubbish from the lower Teifi estuary, this was done by using Celtic longboats, sit on top kayaks and Canadian canoes.
What surprised many people was although the water quality appeared to be really good and has improved dramatically over the past few decades, there is a massive amount of plastic in the river, a problem which has only come about in the last half a century. This is a very worrying trend considering that the catchment area is very rural and sparsely populated. It has been a real eye opener for many of the volunteers as they consider what kind of problems there may be on rivers that are in more populated and industrial areas.
Despite the volunteers’ initial shock and sadness at the situation on one of Wales’s most beautiful rivers, everyone got on with the task in hand and worked tremendously hard. All in all, the 200 plus volunteers put in over 500 hours over work, collected around 4.5 tonnes of metal and around 222 bags of rubbish from the river and along its banks.
The event has been a great success with all involved vowing to carry on with the work on a regular basis. The event has also highlighted the litter problem on our rivers and due to this, volunteer interest has increased. Without the volunteers giving up their precious free time, the event would not have taken place. Their work is invaluable to the wildlife, communities and future generations that live in and on the banks of the river Teifi.
I think it is safe to say that the Teifi Challenge has been a great success and will be the first of many river clean-ups.