First ‘walk, talk and pick’ finds an urn!

The new group, Friends of Ilkley Riverside Park, which is being formed to protect, improve and promote Ilkley Riverside Parks as public parks and recreation grounds has successfully carried out its first litter pick in the Riverside Memorial Gardens on Tuesday evening as advertised on Ilkley Chat and in the Ilkley Gazette.

15 or so good citizens of the town turned up and were kitted out with hi viz jackets, gloves and litter pickers and scoured the edges of the park to pick a variety of detritus which had been left in the park.

The Interim Chair, Ed Duguid, said "The park is definitely looking better over the last few weeks with extra collection mid-week by the council and more obviously with the change in the weather. It’s still amazing the amount of litter which was found on the edges of the Park, in amongst the verges and by the riverbank. This included plastic bottles, crisp packets cigarette butts, wine bottles, sandwich wrappings etc. We even found an Urn which had contained someone’s ashes."

"If there is no room in the bins people should just take their litter home and stick it in their own bin. The trouble is, once dropped, it just blows everywhere indiscriminately! This is just a start, of course. The group are already starting to develop ideas and plans to put to the Council about the long term development of the park areas surrounding the river."

The group will continue to meet in the car park over the next two Tuesdays, next to the Riverside Hotel between 6:15 and 6:30 for a briefing and collection of the necessary equipment. The litter pick will be limited to one hour only.

This coming Tuesday 21st August, the group will be concentrating its efforts on King Edwards playing fields across the river If you think you would like to be involved in the work of this new group as it develops its plans and takes action, or you would just like to come along to the litter picks in August, , please contact Ed Duguid, the Interim Chair at: ed@ed-duguid.co.uk or just turn up on Tuesday evening at 6:15pm.