At our December cleanup we were joined on a very windy Sunday by 38 volunteers for some festive fun pulling all sorts of rubbish and unusual items out of the river. This month we were at Ravensbury Terrace in the borough of Wandsworth: this site has changed a lot since we were last here and now has some significant development taking place. Luckily, we were still able to access the river, though some creative wheelbarrowing was required through some of the single file spots!


Ravensbury Terrace is one of our shorter cleanup stretches (about 100m) and has no easy access for the public. Nevertheless, we found plenty of rubbish!
A delightful selection of toys were extracted from the river. Parents with young children might even wonder if attending a cleanup in December would be an excellent way to save money on Christmas shopping? (Disclaimer: The Wandle Trust do not endorse the gifting of river rubbish!).

The clock was ticking as rain was forecast for the afternoon so volunteers made the most of the dry weather and continued litter picking in the river and on the banks until 1:30pm when we stopped for a late lunch and decided to call it a day.

So, what did we find?
Five tyres, two metal poles, a selection of pots and pans, a laptop, a sealed steak, a football, some handcuffs, a Robin Hood CD, a clock, a boiler cover, a bed frame, a set of car carpets, some plastic guttering, 4 plastic toys, items of clothing and a whole host of other rubbish.

A special thank you to everyone who helped unload in the morning and pack up the van at the end of the event, Dave for supervising the Event Tent, Wandsworth Council for organising collection of all the rubbish, Big Yellow Wandsworth for providing free storage space for our equipment and to our funder, Thames Water.
Thank you to all our volunteers for coming:
Dave, Katharine, Louis, L, Karen, Rob, Charles, Wally, Eamonn, Bev, Matthew, Mark, Tony, Aaron,
Zead, Suzanne, Anita, J, Kim, Thomas, Margaret, Rob, Tom, Mark, Freddie, William, Sue, Gary, Sheila, Andy, Martin, Nick, Luke, Philip, E, Per, Derek & Caitlin.