Wellington Pick

I had to get our signs from last week before we could head out on our pick this week and this lengthened the amount of time we were out. We’d spaced the signs out last week and whilst that works perfectly when out walking – but when it comes to picking them up it’s a little more inconvenient.

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One of the signs, pole and laminated paper had gone missing – presumably someone has pulled it out – just hope they disposed of it sensibly! Having got the signs we headed out to our start point. I have called my account Somerset Litter Picker – but so far we have really been a Taunton Litter Picker. So this week to try and justify the account name we headed a little further afield – starting at Wellington Swimming Pool.

We picked around the car park first and then around the swimming pool building itself before heading down to Wellington Basin. This is a lovely little area with a couple of ponds and water ways There was loads of wildlife and none of it seemed all that bothered by us. We saw swans with their young, ducks again with youngsters, coots – and all in a lovely setting.

The walk could be divided into 3 sections.

The first part was the car park where we got a smattering of the usual rubbish – car park tickets, sweet wrappers some plastic bottles and a football.

The main walk was around the basins and along a stream. As you enter the park there is a lovely lake with lots of wildlife – swans and ducks etc and in amongst all of that there were a can and a plastic bottle floating in the water. On the resto the this bit of the walk there was a moderate amount of rubbish. We had to retrieve a bread bag from a tricky place which required some teamwork and trust! Dad tried to get a Fosters can from a stream where it was stuck in a branch – unfortunately it was too much of a stretch and it just ended up floating away down the stream. There were quite a few alcoholic cans discarded next to the bank where people fish. I don’t know if that rubbish is from when people are fishing in the lake and just throw rubbish behind them or if it is people walking through. Anyway – it’s gone now! We walked up the path and then crossed the stream over a small weir. And then headed back to the leisure center. We picked up a couple of dog poos that had been left on the path. We have dogs and always try and pick up after them – it’s not nice to see such a nice area spoiled by mess like that. We saw a lovely family of swans and some cute ducklings as well.

The last part of the pick was the skateboard park and the second bit of the car park. We had got a reasonable amount of litter so far but it really started to pick up in the skateboard park. Ice cream wrappers, sweet packets, broken wheels, soft drinks bottles.

At one point we thought we were going to go the whole walk with no McDonalds which would have been a first but in the Skateboard park we found a cup discarded near the top of one of the ramps. Our trolley even did some “Skateboarding” in the park -dropping in on a ramp! We were a bit concerned at one point as it lifted a wheel into the air and both Dad and I had visions of it tipping over and throwing all the litter back out.

We then headed back to the car walking along one side of the car park where we hadn’t been at the start. We noticed a little bit of litter to the side of the clothing recycling container which Dad went to pick up.

He then noticed that behind the bin was a load of rubbish that had been chucked away. Lots of McDonalds packaging, a bit from KFC , some glass lager bottles and loads of red bull cans and assorted plastic bottles. We probably collected as much from that one spot as we had on the rest of the walk. There was some that we just couldn’t reach as it was so far back in the undergrowth. Maybe we’ll go back in more appropriate clothing for ferreting around in thick bushes.

We didn’t cover a huge distance today – only 4KM but it took about 2 and ½ hours. We collected

Recycling: 2.85 KG

Bike Wheel: 0.11 KG

Rubbish: 3.99 KG

Total: 6.95 KG