Today we thought we would revisit Wellington – we picked around Wellington Basin last summer – you can read about that pick here
https://mfrowde.wixsite.com/ifcambodia/post/wellington-pick
but today we had planned to wander around the nice park in the centre and then go along the high street along to the far end of Wellingtons near Courtfield School and then head back to the car.
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And if you’d like to see where we have been in map form you can find all our picks here:
The litter started before we had even got out of the car – I looked up and could see a soft drinks can in the hedge directly in front of us!
We did a small bit of picking in the car park but then headed down to the park. It’s a lovely park and seems really well cared for. There are a lot of Squirrels - none of them seem to be that afraid of us and they came very close to us!.
The first section we walked around was mostly clean, there were a few wrappers around, and we found about two bottles in this first bit. There were also some condoms which had been discarded under a tree and 1 just on a path.
We exited the nice park and dropped down into the playing field where there are a couple of football pitches and a basketball hoop.
The playing field was really quite dirty – right at the bottom of the step we found both a bagged and an unbagged dog poo – and this really was the story of our pick today.
We started walking down the bottom end of the field – it’s not far from the footall pitch and it just seemed to be a constant stream of discarded dog poo bags or unbagged dog poos. At one point Dad was focussed on a large plastic bottle in the hedge took one careless step forward and then nearly slipped as he trod on a really quite large dog poo. He wasn’t very happy – although we did managed to laugh about it. We thought this bit was particularly bad – being right next to the football pitch – it wouldn’t take much for the ball to come off the pitch and get poo on it or nestle in the hedge and then as the player comes to get it they could end with a poo problem.
As we walked on and continued around the field we found dog poo bag after dog poo bag and unbagged poo after unbagged poo. I think this is a big problem here – Dad said he wouldn’t be too happy about Ben (my brother) playing football on one of the pitches. People should take more care and pick their dog poo up so it is nicer for children to play. We also found an un-bagged dog poo right by a basketball hoop which also wasn't nice – again a stray ball from the hoop could easily find it’s way into the undergrowth and either land in the poo or lead a child to stand in the poo..
As well as poo bags we found broken glass. This is dangerous for children and dogs that are using the park, people should be more careful!
At the bottom corner of the park was a fence that led to Courtfields school – I quickly climbed that and collected some litter which had gathered at the bottom of their field. We also had to lean over the fence at the top of the park to get some more litter from their land.
We walked through the little play area and found quite a lot of sweet wrappers and food containers as well as some cans – I had a quick go on the slide.
Just by a picnic bench at the entrance to the play area we found a piece of carpet which looked like it was covered with what looked like a sloppy dog poo ( which had now hardened) – we carefully picked that up and added it to our bag.
We walked out of the park and saw a mini egg wrapper inside the grounds of Courtfields School - I tried to get it but my arms were just too short so dad had to reach in and get it – although he was only just able to reach it.
We then walked back into the formal park area – again there were several plastic bottles and we found some more condoms as well as the box that they had come from.
As we exited the formal gardens we found yet another un-bagged dog poo – again within eyesight of a dog poo bin. We also found a flask by the road side - we decided to leave it there in case someone just forgot it and would come back for it, and if no-one collects it in a few weeks we may go back to pick it up and get rid of it. When we walked Hadrian’s Wall in the summer Dad lost a water bottle in a similar way - he forgot to pick it up when he got some food out but when we went back to get it someone had cleaned it\taken it away.
We headed back to the car but before we finished we thought we might as well pick in the car park – right in the corner of the car park we found quite a lot of cans, a discarded nappy and a flannel or towel. It looked like someone had just dumped all the stuff there to get rid of it.
We had thought we would do a much bigger loop, but it had taken quite a long time make our way around the field and we had found quite a lot of rubbish - our bags were full and pretty heavy. I think we were both surprised how much we had found in the park\field.
Dad thinks the poo in the park is a real problem – he wouldn’t be overly happy with us playing there – either just playing or playing sport as there is far too much poo – he said that he knows it’s only a minority of dog owners that do it but it looks to be a really big problem. I think we must have picked up something like 30-40 dog poos – some bagged some not. He thought that it was such a big problem that dogs should probably be banned from the park – or have an on lead policy in that area.
There were a lot of dog poo bins as well – the formal gardens had several – we just couldn’t understand it. We have our own dogs and always pick up after them.
We had been gone for about 1hour and 48 minutes covering 2.39km and we picked up 3.95kg of rubbish and 4.06 kg of recycling.
Because of all the dog poo we had picked we decided to take the rubbish bag straight to the tip this week. The recyclables we will sort out and recycle into the right areas.
Thank you for reading all the way to here!
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