If you go down to the woods today…
…you’re in for a big – pile of rubbish? At least, you would have been if you’d strolled past the Coombe Dingle car park at Blaise at the start of August. A scaffolding pole, a lorry tyre and 30 car tyres, roadworks signs, concrete blocks, a hedge trimmer, bikes, carpets, tents, clothes, shoes, toys, plastic bottles, drinks cans, tins of paint and oil, mattresses, asbestos, an enormous wooden board and even the proverbial kitchen sink – just some of the junk that a crack team of SusWoT volunteers had pulled out of the Trym that week.
Since March 2018, Sustainable Westbury-on-Trym (SusWoT) has run a monthly litter pick. There are now more than 40 local people who pick litter and about half turn out for each litter picking session.
An astonishing 80 sacks of rubbish have been collected in four sessions as well as prams, a tractor tyre, and full suitcases!
The footpaths throughout Westbury, Sheepwood, and the woods by Vintery Lees and Clover Ground have been tackled.
There are some people who also do litter picking on their own at other times.
If you feel inspired to help please get in touch by emailing suswot2050@gmail.com.
Bristol Waste has been very supportive and is keen to help local groups wishing to run litter picking activities. Their Community Engagement Officer, Lydia Francisty, helped us set up the litter picking activities, advising us on best practice, loaning the kit we need and arranging for the assembled rubbish and recycling to be collected promptly. Bristol Waste will also deal with broken glass, dog mess and needles reported to them.
In July, SusWoT embarked upon the more ambitious task of starting to clear the river Trym. The Trym is around 4 miles long, rising in Filton and joining the Avon by Sea Mills railway station. The river runs through culverts from Filton to Southmead, through Badock’s Wood as a river, and then through the centre of Westbury in channels and finally through Blaise and to the Avon as a ‘proper’ river.
SusWoT would like the Trym, its tributary Hazel Brook, and their surrounding woodlands and meadows to become a high quality corridor for wildlife from Sea Mills to Southmead.
It is possible to walk from Sea Mills station to Blaise more or less off-road and beside the river except to cross the Shirehampton Road by the Mill House pub. The Friends of Badock’s Wood and Friends of Blaise have done great work to improve the environment in those areas.
There has been lots of fly tipping for many years between the Dingle Bridge and the Shirehampton Bridge. This detracts greatly from the benefits of spending time in this green oasis. It is already home to kingfishers, kestrels, eels, owls and minnows as well as the more common urban wildlife, but it could become much more – diverse wildlife corridor linking Blaise to the Avon one way and to Badock’s Wood the other.