Several small springs merge into the river near Wadeford it then flows north past Donyatt, Ilminster, Puckington, and Isle Abbotts, before joining the Parrett.

[2] The road bridge over the river at Knowle St Giles is a Grade II listed building.

The canal joins the river approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) before the confluence with the Parrett.

The name of this stream is first attested in a thirteenth-century copy of a perhaps tenth-century forgery of a charter purporting to date from 725,[6] as Caducburne.

[8] Andrew Breeze has more recently suggested that caduc was actually a Brittonic name for the stream, adopted into Old English with burn as an explanatory addition, related to the Modern Welsh word caddug ("mist, gloom, darkness").