Ashamed

I thought long & hard about this Blip. For the most part I'm all about the positive nowadays - and on Saturday I had a great day out climbing the Corridor Route on Scafell Pike with two lovely clients - they were at their limit but keen to push themselves - a great achievement and they went off to their hotel buzzing (& looking forward to a well earned pint).

But waiting for them to arrive at Seathwaite - the lane was like this. Everywhere. Not one isolated instance - but several - and the mess carried on up the hill and down. Those of you who know me will know how proud I am of our hills & how much I love introducing people to the beauty they have to offer - but this, this is so shameful & the main culprit - sadly its the slowly becoming infamous Three Peaks Challenge - the staggering rise in the numbers of people doing this has led to Scafell, Snowdon & the Ben becoming dumping grounds for near industrial quantities of rubbish - as people with little or no love for the hills, all too often viewing it more as a drinking weekend than a walking weekend, descend and do, well, this.
I can be precise about this as I'm here a lot. Yes there is some litter most of the time, and these peaks attract a lot of 'one time' visitors - but as soon as the challenge event season kicks off it moves up to another level - chatting to the farmer at Seathwaite he said the lane looks like this every weekend from May to October - Vans pull up in the early hours, leave six hours later - and think its acceptable to empty their waste before they go.

I'm the Lakes Co-ordinator of the Three Peaks Deep Clean event - last year on one Saturday in October 70 volunteers brought over a quarter of a tonne of rubbish off our three National Peaks - based on this we could do the same every Saturday. It's easy for people to say "I never would" - but some obviously do - with events that may have one leader to 16 (or more) participants it's impossible for the leader to police - but its also impossible not to see it either, so somewhere someone is turning a blind eye.

This years clean up operation is scheduled for Saturday October 4th;
If you fancy lending a hand then please get in touch:
real3peaks.scafell@gmail.com
real3peaks.snowdon@gmail.com
real3peaks.bennevis@gmail.com