Cardington Artificial Slalom Course
Coordinates: 52°7′37.42″N 0°25′44.03″W / 52.1270611°N 0.4288972°W
Cardington Artificial Slalom Course (CASC) was the first artificial whitewater canoe slalom course in the UK when it was completed in July 1982, having been first discussed in 1972.
Based on the River Great Ouse adjacent to Cardington sluice, within the grounds of Priory Country Park and approximately 2.5 km downstream from Bedford, the course has a dual role as both a flood control structure and a whitewater course for canoe slalom training and events.
The course cost £273,000 and was funded by a consortium of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Anglian Water (now the Environment Agency), the Sports Council (now UK Sport) and local councils and was seen as an excellent example of the relatively low cost adaptation of a necessary structure to provide a facility of national significance.
The structure consists of an automatically controlled dropleaf control sluice, 9 metres wide, at the head of a concrete-lined channel which connects the upper reach of the river to the lower. The channel is 120 m long with a bed slope of 1:100. To create the required water flow pattern, fibreglass boulders known as "hippos" and "dollies" are secured to the base of the channel. The maximum head is 1.7 m with a maximum water capacity of 15 cubic metres per second.
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