Journey to the sea - part 3 Animals alive and dead

Animals are a large incentive for me and the reason I go litter picking.

There's nothing like a calf to stir your heart and make you see all that is good in the world. (Provided you don't think too hard about  where it will most likely end up!)

Although with the cows come the flies, I fished this one out of my eye after a litter picking walk.

But it's not just the flies that suffer, please cut the ear loops on your disposable masks.

And please dispose of your masks properly.

It is not unusal to find dead rodents in cans.

And bottles

They can't get out after they get in.

and another

It's so sad.

This poor little thing was inside a crisp packet.  I threw him to the kites.

Anyway talking of food! 

But look at this little fella, he followed me all round the field, I rang mulitiple farmers before finding the one that owned his mum and they came to fetch him!

I love this horse, it always comes to see me as I walk past.  I found a horse wandering down a path one day, I'd just started to ring the stable to send some of the girls down to collect it (I could hear them up on the hill!) when they spotted it and came wellie charging down to collect it!

Need a hair cut mate?  Lockdown is getting to us all!

Another one of my walk buddies that always comes to see me.  

But I do love to take time to watch the birds.

So, yeah, please take your litter home with you.  It's not that it looks unsightly, we can all cope with ugly, it's that it KILLS

 

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Journey to the sea - part 2

I told you about how the rubbish got to my local area of water  This problem had me thinking about the straws that end up in turtles noses, or the plastic micro beads in fish that we eat.  Could any of the rubbish left about as far away from the sea as you can get in the UK get to the sea?

Well it turns out it wasn't that difficult to work out the answer.

A plastic bottle left floating here, or even just sitting on the dried up shore in the summer.

Can get to the canal next work very quickly.

In the summer the over flow is dry.

In fact I've been up the tunnels that go under the road and stood under this grill - probably incredibly stupid, but there you go, I didn't think too hard about it at the time.

But once the water fills back up, it water pours down the overflow.

I was incredibly proud when I saw this first spill over of Winter 2020, there was no rubbish at the grid - I feel that has a lot to do with the 300+ bags of rubbish I removed from the area.

I had been in this, when it was dry. many times over the summer, clearing it of rubbish.

The water shoots down here,

and comes out here.

There is some grilling but not much.

And off it goes, Tampax tree (remember that?!)  is the dark trunk top right! 

The water that flows past 'tampax tree' mostly drains off to the fields unless it is incredibly wet then it joins a water course that heads under the canal,  but we will follow the wider stretch of water that flows to the right.

There's been a heron down here for as long as I can remember, huge beast of a bird.  It flies low along the water and then over the fields to the canal. 

There are a pair of great white egrets on the main body of water, but the grey heron that lives down here is my favourite.

I've also seen kingfishers down this way too.

and the water meets the canal, the heron often sits here.

And so now the litter flows with the pull of the boats and the water movement as the lock gates open and close.

At the Northampton Arm the water meets the River Nene.

 Heading on towards Peterborough

Until meeting the Norfolk marshes.

Maybe my plastic bottle will sink into the mud with King John's treasure

Or maybe it will make it all the way and flow out into The Wash to meet the North Sea. 

A journey of about 150 miles.

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Journey to the Sea - part 1

Late spring we had a lovely warm spell and national lockdown 1 combined.  People had a lot of time on their hands to go sit in areas other than their gardens. But no time to bag their litter up and take it home.

We bordered a town where the lockdown continued even after the national lockdown had ended, so the visitors continued to come.

It became a bit bothersome (understatement), people were travelling here from miles away and the locals were very vocal about it on social media.

Unfortunately the locals were inclined only to moan about it.

So I went out and bought myself a litter picker and a roll of bin bags and started to go down there a few times a week and pick up the mess.

So much mess!

Bottles floating.

Smashed bottles

Masks, so many masks.

Socks

Pants.

So many socks, pants, flip flops, t-shirts, shorts I could have opened a clothes shop.

My main motivation for wanting to pick up the mess was the birds.  This is not my photo, but it is what spurred me on.

The area I was clearing is a local area of special interest.  There are lots of migrating and nesting birds here.

The activity of 100s and 100s of people coming to the water every day started to affect the fish.  

The rats in the area increased because of the amount of food waste.

It was a never ending mess.

Bottles, food packets, tins, clothes, masks, condoms, pregnancy tests, cigarette ends, BBQs, float aids, hats, baby bottles, used nappies, used sanatary items (don't ask me about the tampax tree - all the girls went there!) - if a human could leave it, it was left.

 

Bear in mind this is a private water, with no public access to the shore line, not safe for swimming and no boating allowed.  And yet they brought their boats.  

And quite often left them behind too.

One day I was picking litter and a mini drove past me and parked up.  They put the box of a blow up boat on the roof of the car as I walked past.  When I came back the car was gone, the box and popped boat were in its place.

They came, they drank, they ate, they swam, they left....their rubbish behind.

I was going to the water day after day

getting very frustrated with the rubbish I couldn't reach.

occassionally I'd shout to the young adults in the water to throw the rubbish up to me so I could bag it.

I gave them bags to put their rubbish in.

But still they left it behind.

They left it in interesting places.

They left it without consuming it.

The summer evenings were long and warm.

The McDonalds wrappers were free flowing.

I'd leave the water at half eight or nine at night having picked litter after work.  I'd go back by 10am the next day and they would be a whole new batch to be picked.

It felt endless, but I knew why I was doing it.

In the summer the water has large shore lines,  the litter was strewn all over it.  

But in the winter there is no shore.

The water is high, laps the road and overflows to the river.

So I carried on picking.

Over 300 bags by the time autumn came around and the visitors slowly petered out into odd cars of KFC throwers and cannabis smokers.

I carried on walking the shore line, still picking the remnents of the summer fun.  As the undergrowth died back, more and more litter continued to be exposed. 

Once the visitors quietened down, the fly-tippers could give it a go.

I tried to pull some of it out.

But sadly the rain started before I could finish it and off floating it went.

But for all the hard work, of the months of spring, summer and autumn it was worth it.  It was good exercise, I made new friends of the fishermen and the guy currently renting the old boat house (all of whom were also clearing up the mess.)

But mostly I have an overriding memory of spending a lot of time enjoying and helping nature.

 

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