ADAM Piggott was determined to take out the trash, but what he found in Queen Elizabeth Country Park (QECP) was trouble.
He couldn’t really avoid it, though, as the warning sign left in the undergrowth beside the A3 was hard to miss with its big letters and bright colours.
“I wasn’t looking for trouble but I guess I found it,” one of four cyclists that removed months, if not years, of litter from a gully on Friday afternoon.
“I’ve also found a 17-year-old credit card and a Stanley knife with an exposed blade. I’m glad I wasn’t using my hands when I found that.”
Fans of the recently-opened cycleway between Buriton and the QECP Visitor’s Centre got off their bikes on Friday as part of the Great British Spring Clean.
They concentrated on the gully beside the layby on the southbound A3 between the Buriton and QECP junctions that countless users have turned into a dumping ground.
“It’s really just to tidy it up, increase the numbers of people using this cycleway and encourage more people to cycle through here,” said volunteer Mike Ashton, who played a big part in making the cycleway become a reality.
“If people come across a mess like this it might put them off using it again. Everybody claims they’ve no money and there’s also been questions about who owns this land so we thought we would do it.”
Adam, putting it more poetically, added: “You could say it’s the council’s duty to do this but when their money is finite so is their might.”