Thursday’s (June 4th) Friends of the Shuttle’s clean-up, from the BETHS school footbridge down towards the slip-road bridge near the Holiday Inn in Bexley, attracted 8 participants.
This stretch of the river looks quite idyllic as one looks downstream from the footbridge, but unfortunately the thundering traffic of the A2 is only yards away. Despite the river itself looking quite clean, nevertheless 4 sacks of recyclables and 7 sacks of other material were removed from the water and banks.
A bucolic scene from way out in the countryside somewhere? No – it’s the Shuttle downstream of BETHS footbridge, just yards from the A2 road. (Photo: Chris Rose)
The edge of the road is littered with vastly more material, but this is cleared up by paid agencies, and is fortunately prevented from blowing into the river at this time of year by the tall intervening bankside vegetation.
A couple of small patches of Japanese Knotweed were noted and these will be reported to the Council in case they have not been noticed before, though we would have thought that the Environment Agency might be aware of them already.
Chris Rose
