Ahoy there me hearties! Do I have a tale to tell yee...

One stormy Saturday morning, four intrepid Goodgym souls assembled in the port of Cardiff Met car park: Captain Mikey, First Mate Fiona, Pirate Pete and that Scallywag Sean.

Why you ask? Well, Keep Wales Tidy had recruited us to the crew of the anti-littering campaign Treasure Your River. They kindly provided us with some finishing touches to our pirate attire, and armed us with gloves and pre-hooped litter bags.

Before setting off, we warmed up with some buccaneering exercises:
- Plogging on the spot
- St-Argh! Jumps
- Litter Lunges and Squats
- Long John Silver quad stretches
- (no walking out a plank though, thankfully!)

Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter. As a workout, it provides variation in body movements by adding bending, squatting and stretching to the main action of running, hiking, or walking. Plogging is considered a perfect activity, as it is positive both for the body, and for the environment.

Twas time to weigh anchor. We caught the prevailing wind along Western Avenue, picking up some plastic flotsam and jetsam along the way. Next, we navigated our way along the river's pebble beach shoreline. We discovered a shopping trolley and two shipwrecked paddle boards.

Suddenly, a cry from the crow's-nest: "SHOE!! SHOE!!". Before you could say shanty, Mikey found his sea legs, and we watched our Captain hook a croc out from the river*.

Each year Cardiff Harbour Authority collect an average of 500 tonnes of litter, with an estimated 90% making its way down the River Taff.

We joined back with the other crews and continued our marauding along the trail, with Pete giving many a hearty ahoy to the landlubbers running by. We had a good chinwag while plucking litter from the shrubs and bushes.

With time getting on, we did an about turn and headed back to the pebble beach to retrieve the trolley of treasure. Getting it up the riverbank required a mighty heave-ho!

We docked back outside Cardiff Met and added our three bountiful bags of booty to the haul of littery loot our fellow buccaneers had amassed. Pondering the pollution purged from the river, it was a fine day's plogging indeed!

(* Twas actually a flipflop, but us pirates don't let facts get in the way of a good tale, aaargh!)