On a bright and extremely breezy Tuesday afternoon, five members met at Abel Heath Farm to clear litter from the heath. At first glance, the place looked fairly clear, even the day after a bank holiday. The grass had been swiped fairly recently and quite a lot of gorse had been cut and left lying. The rest of the western gorse bushes glowed yellow in the sunshine, but the distinctive coconut scent was blown away. The wind also kept birds down, but several chiffchaffs sang in the trees.
Here and there, the bluebells were just coming into bloom, but recent cold winds meant that the celandines and the escaped daffodils were still flowering. Along the road edges were blue comfrey, yellow archangel and white stitchwort.
We set off across the heath with litter pickers and black plastic sacks, gradually collecting rubbish, bottles, cans, the remains of a takeaway meal, which someone had taken the trouble to hide in the middle of a gorse bush (it would have been as easy to take it home). Nearby someone had donated to the National Trust one plastic bag of garden rubbish, and three bags of concrete slabs, carefully broken into six inch squares.
But, over the gorse along the road, someone had thrown, probably at the same time, an upright vacuum cleaner, a computer monitor and a small television, together with a collection of wire which might have at one time supported a mattress. This treasure trove ended up in a skip at Abel Heath Farm; we told Dave Brady about the concrete, which would also end up in the skip.
We finished with three bags of litter, in addition to the above, so our efforts were worthwhile.