We began the New Year with an amazing clean-up of a section of the River Drone.  More than fifty volunteers including families with young children, town and district councillors and MP Lee Rowley tackled a section of the watercourse at Mill Lane.

Working alongside experts Matt and Sally from the Don Catchment Rivers Trust, we filled bag after bag of rubbish cleared from the river, adjacent banks and all along the Mill Lane track and Nature Area.  Items ranged from tyres, old signs and road cones to small plastic waste including bottles and numerous wipes which don’t degrade as many also contain plastic.  Much of the rubbish was carried downstream in the recent floods, being attached to vegetation on the river banks giving an indication of how high the water level had been, although some items had clearly been in the river for much longer.

Younger volunteers had a marvellous ‘adventure’ supervised under the bridges and ‘tunnels’ whilst getting very wet and dirty.  This event was extremely well-supported, so thank you to all who came along and to the DCRT for providing refreshments free of charge.  The images show what a huge amount of rubbish we collected and how much better the river looked afterwards.

You can view a selection of images from the day by viewing the slider below: