Fathers Day Dog Walk by the Tone

isobelfrowde
Jun 19, 2022
4 min read

I thought I’d treat Dad to a Father’s Day litter pick by the River Tone. We went out after lunch. We took our Dogs with us today – we knew it was an all (or pretty much all) off road trail and they just love going for walks.

Before I go on - if you want to sponsor me you can do so here: https://gofund.me/78d66343

You can also follow me on facebook if you'd like to be notified when I do something littery! My page is here: Somerset Litter Picker | Facebook

Before we started we went to get the signs we put out last week. Not a great return from those – not sure they generated any donations. There are a lot of things to give money to these days and everything is costing more – we still had fun doing the pick though so not all bad.

One of the signs that we had put in the park near the school had gone. But we were able to retrieve the other 3 (dad had picked one up earlier in the week as it had fallen over).

For our pick today we parked in Obridge Road at the point where the Canal and the Tone are close to each other and cris crossed by paths.

There was a lot of litter from the off – just next to some newish flats there is a fence and wild hedge which runs next to the path and there was a lot of bits in there – cans, bottles – 1 full bottle of milk – we had to empty that out to get it through the fence.

As we approached the turn to the Tone we did see a bag full of cans – we were a little concerned that someone may have already picked along the river. We carried on regardless – thinking that if we didn’t find anything we would turn round and find somewhere else.

We needn’t have worried – the litter kept on coming – it wasn’t as regular as some walks we have done but it was consistent. We did find the carcass of an electric scooter – we were glad we had brought the trolley as the scooter was quite heavy. We haven’t been able to decide if we should include the scooter in our weight count – it doesn’t seem to really fit the term litter – but then someone has thrown it somewhere they shouldn’t so maybe it does.

Then we passed Bathpool and headed towards the Hankridge Farm shopping area. The closer we got the more McDonalds detritus appeared. We then crossed a small bridge into a small park area where there was a bench and a bin – it’s the closest entrance to the Cinema/Bowling/McDonalds bit. This was a quite a bit of mess as there was a lot of litter spread around. I think it was one of those situations where the bin provided becomes full but people keep shoving or trying to shove it in or just leave it next to it and the wind blows it round. Whichever – it was spread all around.

Once we’d cleared that we carried on out towards the M5. We came across some memorial benches to the people that were killed in the M5 Fog crash back in 2011 – some lovely benches and a nice wooden memorial pole. Disappointingly there was even some litter here – where there is a bench you usually find some rubbish – but you would hope that that somewhere like that would be treated with a little more care – we cleaned this up and left it in a more fitting state.

We thought about turning around but Dad said we should just walk up to the motorway and use that as our turning point.

When we reached the bridge we couldn’t believe the mess underneath it. There seemed to be litter everywhere – crisp packets, newspapers, batteries, cans, bottles it was on the floor and up the concrete banking up to the road - it was everywhere. It felt like we had taken on a bit too much – and we did wonder if we should leave it and come back another day – but we were there and actually all it takes is to do it 1 bit at a time. As we had the Dogs with us I stayed with them and project managed the whole operation while dad wandered around underneath a motorway bridge picking up a mass of litter – Happy Fathers Day Dad! It did take a while but we did get it cleaned up and it did look a lot better and would be a lot nicer to walk through now.

After we had cleared this we headed back the way we had come.

On the way back we found a Dunelm shopping trolley down by the bank of the river. We dragged it back up to the main path where we had seen the bag of cans earlier and where a trolley cousin from Sainsburys was. We did Instagram Dunelm – I wasn’t sure if the shops are responsible for their trolleys when they are dumped like that – anyway we gave them the location