20. Small criminal acts

For the most part litter-picking is a joy, in ways you would not expect when you first begin. The people you meet. The fine detail as the seasons change; the crops and plants that come and go; the new animal tracks. The way light and cloud play on the leaves and undergrowth of the verge and hedges, hiding and revealing and pretending to be cans and glass and paper. The beauty of our surroundings: look at Dumbleton Hill across the crop, below.

But then there is that malicious quality to the petty criminals who dump the rubbish they've presumably been paid to remove into our landscape. Fly-tipping is technically not a litter-picking thing, but we also live here, and the stream that feeds the river that runs through the parish and past Sedgeberrow and our neighbours, into the Avon and out to sea belongs to and affects all of us, and people and creatures unseen. To dump your rubbish into it, to contribute to its poisoning and degradation, as someone has done here.... and as someone has been doing for a while (just lean over the gate and look down the stream as it drains the bottom of the field)... Perhaps when the big burned trees went into the field-opening on the road out towards Dumbleton - which had been a popular fly-tipping/car-burning site for some time - they simply went to some other place that was protected, easy, safe, and vulnerable. And maybe they thought 'nobody cares enough to put a hidden camera in there, to catch us at the job'.

May 27, 2025.  You can possibly see the glints of light on the moving stream in the dark patches between leaves, at the bottom of this dump. A Travis-Perkins bag, and brightly coloured bits of someone having had work done. And too far, and too expensive, to build into the costs of taking it all to the recycling centre. Did that estimate for work seem low? Maybe this is why.