Slow-flowing Lowland Stream

Well, this may seem like cheating really, but this blip today is a painting impression of the slow-flowing lowland stream that passes a long the edge of Horeston Grange Housing Estate. A stream created by man to be part of the flood defense of Nuneaton town centre when heavy down pouring of rain falls mainly on the plains upstream from here, which otherwise would happily flow through the town causing mayhem and be devastating to people’s businesses and homes.

This image is very ordinary when seen from the footbridge that joins the estate to Oaston Road. Yet we are incline to take things for grated. I know that whenever I walk Sheba, we always go to the footbridge and I look over the sides of the bridge to see the state and height of the stream. However, it is not always the height of the water that I am concerned for, but the amount of rubbish and shopping trollies that seem to find its way into this little continuous flow of liquid.

Here is list of some of the things that I have spied from the footbridge over the years, shopping trollies, bicycles, metal girders, for sale boards, ripped down branches of trees, garden tools, shopping bags, plastic bottles, tin cans, bricks, breeze blocks, plastic pipes, punctured footballs, broken bottles, and once a mini-motorbike!

Whenever I see this my heart sinks to see this happening. We/I can often walk by on the other side and not see this destruction of our environment as being someone else problem, but it is our problem too. The question is are we prepared to act to make a change? To have an active clean up of this wonderful stream. To get our wellies on and rubber gloves, our little gadgets to pick up litter from the bed of this little water way in our back yard. I have often wonder about it, but is is too much for one person, who would like to spend a Saturday morning and maybe an afternoon doing something for the local environment. Where children play and cross these sometimes still waters. Where all manner of dogs including Sheba like to cool off and have a drink on a hot day. Where walkers cross in their boots and find later that their footwear has been cut open by the various sharp object underfoot on the bottom of the this wonderfully life giving slow-flowing lowland stream...