A Wee Rantette

Would you believe that today was the first time that we’ve set foot on Cannock Chase since January 2012?

Would you also believe that, on a Sunday morning, we were parked and walking by quarter past eight?

I find both facts quite hard to believe.

Only a few things were notably different from our previous visits, the main one being the amount of litter. Why, oh why? If you can carry a plastic bottle full of drink onto the Chase, surely you can carry the few grams of plastic bottle back off again? If you can carry a snack bar onto the Chase, surely you can carry the wrapper back off again? If you can carry your M&S tray of sushi onto the Chase, surely the crook of a multi-trunked tree isn’t the right place to put the empty plastic tray?

Who do these oiks think are going to clear up after them? What do they think is going to happen to their litter? Who do they think is going to pick up after them? Or do they visit beauty spots like this and still say ‘eeee, int this grand?’ even with the litter?

As you’ll notice if you look at the background, this load of rubbish is right next to a car park. The oiks thought this state of affairs was the better option than carrying their litter fifty paces back to the car with them.

We very rarely come back from a trip on the Chase without a plastic bottle or two. Today we broke our previous record and picked up seven (there’s an orange Fruit Shoot one hiding behind the Coke one).  Depressingly, directly on our route, we left as many bottles as we picked up.

I imagine that the rigid sports bottle on the left was an accidental loss, particularly as it was still half full.

In one area we passed an entire trail of very recently discarded ‘Chewy Bar’ wrappers. The only people we saw on that section of the Chase were group after group of Scouts doing D of E training. Not that I’m implying that there’s any link between those two statements…

And, whilst I’m ranting, there was one other thing I noticed whilst we were walking: the continued growth of the number of signs littering the verges of the main paths. The one on the left in the photo below particularly struck me. The post on the right has been there for a few years, however, someone seems to have decided that the ‘Road Crossing Ahead’ warning wasn’t big enough – not even when you take into consideration that barriers have been placed as obstacles further to alert people to the presence of the road. So, a whole new post has been added, next to the old one, duplicating the message, but bigger. Surely one post would be sufficient? 

In spite of the rants (and the tragedy of Mick accidentally knocking over my full flask of tea, whilst I had the lid off it), we had a good march around our trusty old route, racking up 8.5 miles on this occasion (I call it our trusty old route, but the end has a number of variations to give distances of between 7.5 and 12.5 miles). We amassed more up than usual too, having left the main path at one point to go over (what I call) the ‘lumpy-lumpy bits’.