Children took part in a clean up of Keswick as part of The Big Help Out day following the coronation of King Charles III.
Six million people across the country took part in the national event on Monday May 8 which was designed to get people to come together and lend a hand in their communities to experience how rewarding volunteering can be and the power it has to make a change.
Youngsters belonging to Keswick Guides, Threlkeld Brownies and the First Keswick Scout Group took part in a litter pick which resulted in 23 bags of rubbish being collected and taken to the Flusco tip for disposal.
“When challenged to do this I thought to myself what was the easiest thing to do to meet this challenge,” said Claudia Walker, a trustee with the First Keswick Scout Group. “I thought of a litter pick, but what I did not expect was that the children would come back and be shocked about the amount of rubbish there was.”
Apart from one family that got to the shore of Derwentwater, most of the litter picking activity was focused on Market Square and the town’s car parks, purely because of the amount of discarded waste there was to pick up.
“The children came back and said that there was so much rubbish and I thought something good had come from the exercise – the awareness of how much rubbish there was lying around and an awareness of how people drop rubbish was another big thing to come out of it.”
One set of parents came back with several items of camping gear that had been illegally left on the lake shore.
“They did not know whether they had picked up somebody’s camp or whether people had camped there and then just walked away from it,” said Ms Walker.
Booths, Atkinson’s and the Lake District National Park Authority provided litter pickers and grabbers, while Scewfix donated the rubbish sacks and Friars gave sweets as a reward for the hard work put in by the young people. Refreshments were also served to parents back at the scout hall in Museum Square.
The Big Help Out leadership team was made up of the following: Keswick Scout Group – Bob Reader, Claudia Walker; Keswick Guides – Victoria Moody; and Threlkeld Brownies – Emma Moody.