Ock Path, Tesco End - Saturday 13th December 2025

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 Blog by Eleanor, photos by Eleanor, Kevin and Sally

Once more we had a session on the Ock Path, this time at the Tesco end. Fourteen volunteers turned out, and the weather was unexpectedly fine. One main task was litter picking. As the path leads from Tesco to the houses, people think it's OK to throw down their rubbish. I had realised when I did the recce that there was a lot of litter, but I hadn't bargained for quite so much. 

The other main task was to clear the footpath of leaves that had accumulated throughout the Autumn and become very soggy and slippery, so some picked up litter picking sticks and bags, and others, spades to scrape the path.

Susan gets stuck in



Joan litter picking







Dieuwke and Barbara join in




A break on the gym equipment, Ock meadow





The shovellers clear the path




Roger and Margaret start clearing the bridge



Meanwhile, Adrian set to work clearing the grating in the river. It is there to collect debris and litter, but if it isn't cleared regularly it makes things worse as the river floods over the footpath. After a lot of hard work, the water was flowing downstream more freely.

It was time for our break and we gathered under the trees.

Break time





Seasonal cakes on offer





After the break some people went along the path towards New Cut Mill, where there was still some litter, so it was worth doing.
The shovellers and scrapers made quite an improvement to the path.

At the end of the session, we had more bags of rubbish and recycling than we had ever seen before.








Bags and bags of litter

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