Litter Picking the Yorkshire Three Peaks Route

Every year we take 100’s of walkers around the Yorkshire Three Peaks and there always seems to be a large volume of litter and poo bags on the route. Not a sight you want to see anywhere really and especially not in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales! It doesn’t help the situation too that every year the Y3P seems to be getting some negative press coverage. I have wanted to do a clean up of the Yorkshire Three Peaks route for numerous years now and to work alongside the Yorkshire Dales National Park, but I was rejected for a number of years. It made me quite angry they didn’t seem to want to work with a local business, offering volunteer pickers and to clean up the mess that the Yorkshire Three Peaks walk brings, to me it seemed so logical. It was our way of giving back!

This year though the BMC launched the ‘Hills 2 Ocean‘ campaign to pick up litter from upland environments. They recon that 80% of the litter dropped in the hills ends up in the ocean.

THIS WAS COLLECTED FROM RIBBLESDALE HEAD VIADUCT  TO WHERNSIDE, A EIGHT MILE CIRCULAR WALK.

THIS WAS COLLECTED FROM HORTON IN RIBBLESDALE TO PEN-Y-GHENT, A SIX MILE CIRCULAR WALK.

THIS WAS OUR WAY IN! I got in touch with the BMC as soon as I saw the campaign and we they were delighted we wanted to be part of it. They gave us re-useable bags and litter picks, we were then all set to PICK, PICK, PICK. We advertised two short 6/8 mile walks on our Facebook Page and through the BMC website asking for volunteers but, sadly it was always just me and one other, which as we gather so much of Whernside it was quite a challenge! We had filled one sac within ONE mile of leaving the car and it was heavy. Just to make it a little more challenging it was raining, bitterly cold and very windy. Just what you want!

We were shocked what we found, it was truly disgusting! We are intending to do two more litter picks in 2020: 

•  14th June Pen-y-Ghent 6 miles 1030 meeting in the main carpark 
• 22nd September Whernside 8 miles 1030 meeting at Ribblehead Viaduct. 

If you would like to be involved please phone or email us to express your interest