THE River Wear will turn yellow tomorrow when thousands of plastic ducks are dropped into the water for a charity race.
The event in Durham City is being held to raise money for St Cuthbert's Hospice, WaterAid, which provides clean water in the Third World, and Durham Mayor Ray Gibbon's appeal for the Durham Volunteers Bureau.
The Durham Marketing Initiative, which is organising the event with Northumbrian Water and the Durham University Charities Kommittee hopes the event will be Britain's biggest duck race.
The ducks, which have been sponsored for £1 each, plus bigger corporate ducks for local firms, will be loaded into the buckets of two JCBs and emptied into the river from Elvet Bridge at 12.30pm.
The start will be performed by the Mayor and Captain Trevor Soar, commanding officer of HMS Invincible, the city's adopted warship.
The finishing line is only about 200 yards away at Kingsgate Bridge, but it could take a couple of hours for the little ducks to reach it, depending on the river flow and wind.
Jill Dodds, of the Durham Marketing Initiative, said: "I think we will easily have sold 7,000 ducks and might hit 8,000 or 9,000.
"We will have a blitz selling them today in the Milburngate Centre and people can buy them right up until the race."
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