It was raining, cold and miserable when 12 hearty souls from Burghwallis assembled outside Squirrel Wood Camp site on 17th February. Their mission; to clear the length of Abbe’s Walk of the rubbish deposited by countless bogans over the last nine months.
Abbe’s Walk is exactly a mile long, which why many locals used to call it ‘Mile Lane’. The 12 volunteer litter pickers took two hours to clear the length of the lane on both sides. Thus two linear miles if you want to get picky; a dreadful pun I know. By far the most popular item of rubbish were a staggering amount of Strongbow Cider cans chucked into the undergrowth. After that a host of the usual suspects;-
Jobbing builders rubbish, old toilets, kitchen cupboards, old carpets and a huge number of empty 20 kgs rock salt plastic bags, eight car tyres and wheels, and hundreds of bottles and beer cans.
As ever a pair of ladies’ nickers were found although this time lying in a cast iron fire place, which were assumed to be completely unconnected. In all 32 bin bags of rubbish were collected ( the record is 36 bags) along with all the odds and sods that society doesn’t need. Sherlock Homes would be delighted when a plastic bag burst crammed full of rubbish gave an insight to the owner’s world. The bag was from a cat loving woman (empty cat food tins) with long curly hair (set of rollers) who shops at Mark and Spark’s (labels on coat hangers) for her small boy and girl, (coat hangers again) and who smokes ( ciggy packets) and likes Vodka( bottles) All this revealed in one bag of rubbish – and you thought litter picking was boring!
Cyclists also helped to add to the detritus. Presumably if you have a puncture ’tis much easier to just fit a new inner tube than repair it and chuck the old in the bushes.
The cannabis guys had right clear-out. The root and fertiliser balls being spread along the lane along with builder spoil. All this grot had appeared since the last litter picking exercise, and disconcertingly since the increased number of fly tipping warning posters went up.
The team of volunteers would like to thank the elderly lady who apologised for not being able to attend due to her age and instead sent a few bags of mint sweets for the team. We would also like to thank the small number of car drivers who slowed up to pass the team, and apologise to the many others who presumably thought we were in their way!
The Parish Council would like to thank the volunteers who turned out to assist in this clean up, despite the weather – it always seems to rain when we do a big litter pick – and also DMBC who supplied us with litter pickers, sacks, gloves and hi-viz vests, and who will be collecting our accumulated piles of rubbish on Sunday.