We met for our regular end of month litter pick at Great Salterns this morning. We were minus Katie due to an 'eventful' dog walk yesterday where a tree won ☹️. Speedy recovery soon Katie. Jo met up with Sinéad and Laura who had run parkrun beforehand, whilst Aoife was bar code scanning and Tony was tail walking. Val, Judy and Tess soon arrived and we grabbed our pickers and bags and headed towards the bushes near the golf course. Usually a lot of litter accumulates here due to the wind but we found it quite clean. We headed around the perimeter and picked what we found which wasn't as bad as it usually is although we still found bags of dog poo which were left on benches. Its obviously getting colder as we didn't find any items of clothing but collected plenty of recycling and rubbish.

Thank you to Barrett, Kyson, Thomas & Isaac who joined us from the USA during their year in the UK. Sinead ran the Great Salterns Parkrun before the litter pick and Aoife volunteered as a marshall.

So once the Parkrunners had finished, we walked the perimeter of Great Salterns and managed to collect bulging bags of litter. (And met some gorgeous doggies along the way!)

The great 8 turned up at Baffins this morning to help clean up around the pond and playing fields. Tony and Jo had ran Great Salterns parkrun beforehand, met up with Angela and Sam then we walked across to Baffins to meet Abby, Janet, Jules and Katie We grabbed our pickers and gloves and headed off in different directions looking for rubbish. Tony and Sam headed down to the waters edge and Tony managed to retrieve a can in the pond. They also found a syringe which Sam notified the organisers and this was collected separately. Abby and Julie headed off towards the woods and main field and Janet towards the other side of the pond. Angela made friends with the tame squirrels although they weren't too happy when they didn't have any food and just the nibble of a latex glove. After years of picking almost every type of litter we finally found the kitchen sink which even had the waste and taps still attached.

Other treasures found were: easter egg hunt tokens 5p vape containers plastic ties used for the bird food bags

A lovely sunny morning at Great Salterns.

Two celebrations today: Vicki's 200th good deed , with her own personalised t-shirt designed by Angela and Aoife finally getting to wear the 50 rosette (with the 50 t-shirt on!).

No big rubbish was spotted and yet, when we started looking, we found enough to fill a massive colas bag... Thanks to Jules for accosting the road sweeper on the way - resulting in a couple of bags and, more importantly, information about where to leave them to make sure the foxes don't undo our hard work.

As the title suggests, 3 golf balls were found (& donated to some golfers on the course) and John got a couple of bamboo canes for the allotment.

A productive morning spent in the sunshine.

After a parkrun run/volunteer we joined forces with the other GoodGymers at Baffins Pond for the monthly BPA litter pick.

We welcomed Zoe to her first official good deed even though we've adopted her as part of the team since January 2021 vaccine clinics!

We headed off around the pond, tennis courts and small woods and somehow all split up then mostly met up again near the library, comparing notes on what we'd found (mostly cigarette butts, crisps packets and the odd bit of plastic). We then headed off to Stagg Wood where we collected more rubbish and met a couple who were setting up for a family picnic to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary!

Laura and Vicki led the way into the wilderness area, like Indiana Jones. We tried to avoid the nettles as much as possible, with varying results. We did find the aftermath of a mini party in the woods, with beer cans, gas canisters and balloons, so it's now all clear for the next party.

We then managed to pick up Sinead on the field and almost had to send out a search party for Beth but luckily she returned to the start, complete with a large asparagus box (biggest find of the day).

The team at BPA were very pleased with our efforts. Thank you team!

Angela, Jo, Katie and Lou met on a glorious Saturday morning at Great Salterns for our monthly litter pick.
Armed with bags and pickers we set of to the usual corner where we find a mixture of rubbish that has been dropped and also dumped. We had a mixture of bags for rubbish, recycling and glass. We collected a random amount of rubbish from a dirty nappy, our standard random piece of clothing which looked like parts of jogging trousers. Bags that had been dumped instead of being placed in recycling and some rubbish that had been left and had an aroma that we didn’t want to be near to or even put in our bags. Katie had the find of the day and retrieved a large piece of guttering that had been dumped in the overgrowth. At the end of the hour we had full recycling and rubbish bags but thankfully no glass this time. We’ll be back there next month so you can sign up here and run Great Salterns parkrun beforehand if you want to.