BEAR ESSENTIALS The Newsletter of : -
IWA Warwickshire Branch Issue No. 54 – April 2019.
Heading For The Checkout: The images, right and far-right, taken in March 2017 and 2019 respectively, show how Branch member Ann Rudeck and her colleagues have, over the last few years, been putting their shopping experience to good use along the bottom pound of GU-north, as it passes through Warwick and Leamington. We have been ‘grappling’ with problems in the area for several years now, and whereas for the first couple of years or so our ‘haul’ would regularly include 40 to 50 supermarket trolleys, this year it was down to a dozen ! This must, in no small measure be due, not only to our band of regular members - too numerous to mention individually - but also the local communities, and other groups that have. come ‘on-board’ to help us.
A Growing Problem:
Photo by Alison Smedley.
Problems are usually just precursors to solutions, and at the top of this page I’ve shown examples of where we’ve been, and no-doubt will continue to be, able to illustrate this - and in turn help CRT. However, our Gap-Tracker initiative is exposing some different problems for the Trust. Extended cruising times – due to closure of existing Elsan disposal facilities, without appropriate replacements, has now become a particular problem here in our West Midland Region; and more recently, the abuse of rubbish disposal facilities, as above, has become more prevalent – even here in our own Branch area.
Photo by Great Russell.
Interestingly, this reduced ‘haul’ chimes well with a similarly improving situation that has arisen following six Balsam ‘Blitzes’ in Myton Fields in Warwick – as reported in our last August edition.
Unfortunately, unlike Clean-Ups or Balsam Bashes, we’re not really in a position to help CRT with this sort of problem because, in the case of rubbish bins, their abuse seem to be caused not by boaters, but by locals or ‘outsiders’. It’s a ‘management’ problem. We really must sympathise with CRT over this issue. However, the solution is not simply to close them down. Fortunately the problem at Hawkesbury has been solved by moving the facility ‘indoors’ - safely locked behind a BW Key, as in Birmingham; but local facilities have been lost, at Maidenhead Rd. Stratford, and at Minworth on the B&F. (Although not through abuse - but nevertheless a loss). Now we are faced with the loss of our Newbold facility – closed without warning, consultation, or an appropriate alternative. If this ‘policy’ continues then, instead of seeing sights as on the left, this rubbish will not be concentrated in Biffa Bins, but scattered widely by the ‘provisional wing’ of the boating fraternity along the banks and hedgerows of the hundred miles or more of CRT waterways on our ‘patch’! So come on CRT, (and Warwicks. Branch members) - what can we do here ? Finally, the headline at the top of this page states ‘Heading For The Check-out’. Having originally produced BE, and edited it for at least half of its 18 year life, its now my turn to think about ‘checking out’. Editor: Ian Fletcher.