The River Great Ouse at St Neots became a sea of yellow on Saturday afternoon when hundreds of plastic ducks took to the water to help raise money for a cancer charity.

The Hunts Post: St Neots charity duck race,St Neots charity duck race, (Image: Archant)

Huge crowds watched as more than 1,700 ducks were thrown off the town bridge for the annual St Neots Duck Race.

The Hunts Community Cancer Network (HCCN) which supports people in the community who have been diagnosed with cancer, sold the ducks for £1 each and hopes to have raised about £2,000.

Gini Melesi, community cancer nurse specialist at The Woodlands centre at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, said the event was a great success.

“There was a great community atmosphere and in the end we sold 1,728 ducks. It was a really good day and although we ran out of ducks we hope this is now firmly established as an annual event and people will support us again. The ducks themselves were quite slow, but we had canoes and swimmers in the river helping them along and we couldn’t have managed without them as they did a great job. The money is still coming in, but we hope it will be about £2,000.”

The flotilla of plastic ducks started at St Neots Town Bridge and was ‘helped’ down river by the volunteers and finally crossed the finishing line at the rowing club.

The event was officially opened by Bex Griffiths and St Neots mayor James Corley. Mrs Griffiths, 33, who was diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer in August 2014, is attempting to break the world record for having the most charity team members at a running race.

She now has 170 runners signed up to Team Bex who will run a 5km Parkrun on September 5 and the Peterborough Half Marathon on October 11.