Thanks to the awesome six (Graham, Dan, Anton, Martin, Hannah & Rachael) who joined up with Ian to help collect loads of rubbish up today .
We cleaned the Canal up to Tesco’s, Upper river Colne Loop down & Hannah & Rachael scoured the Canal & river banks and filled 3 big bags full. The paddlers collected another 5 big bags bin bags full. So 8 bags in total.
The plan was to paddle & clean the whole river loop, but this was shortened to just cleaning the top Colne loop for three reasons:
- We found lot more waste than I expected 😒
- Anton had a small incident at the 2nd weir: he played in stopper went in and then did well to roll up, but then went over again anyway! 🤣 Oh dear but no harm done ,
- After 2nd Weir we came across a poor trapped bird dangling from a high tree on fishing line hooked to its leg, seemed doomed and Horrible 😮. However the paddle team worked well together and we managed to release the trapped Moorhen, 😊 We did this by throwing a throwline over the high tree branches, then pulling down the light branches and realising the bird by cutting the wire with a knife! Hooray! 👍 Saved the bird we hope. But it did paddle off gingerly to the bank when I released it after checking last bit of line and hooks were out.
We left last 3 rubbish bags collected at the iron blue grey bridge. Ian went back latter & collected these final bags in his car and took to Ricky Recycling centre. The rest of rubbish went in squashed into Aquadrome bins as we did not take big canoe this time.
Anyway here are some photos from Ian & Hannah
Thanks very much to all who helped today to keep the local environment cleaner. You deserve a BIG CLAP, but I don’t have an emoji for that so have a big kiss instead !😘😂 Cheers all Ian