Litter Picking

For several years now, the Rotary Club of Lutterworth Wycliffe have been pleased to help the Latvian community by litter-picking through the 3 days of their annual Summer Solstice festival held at Catthorpe Manor, followed by 2 days with the clean-up operation.  The Latvian festival is the largest such festival in Europe (outside of Latvia), and  this year, attracted just under 5000 visitors. 

Held on the estate of Catthorpe Manor, festival goers start turning up on the Thursday evening and Friday of the weekend, and we arrived (4 Rotary volunteers) on the Friday morning just after 9:00 am to a welcome as warm as the sunny June weather.  As usual, it was a delight to meet up with members of the Latvian community once again, and the Rotary volunteers scheduled for this first morning were soon at work. There wasn’t a great deal for us to do this morning as the festival hadn’t fully started and many campers were yet to arrive, so the litter was minimal. By 11:00 am, we had done what we could, and so it was off to the canteen for coffee.  By this time, the warm June weather was turning into hot June weather, so we were very pleased we had finished our work for that day.  It also prompted us to review our time slots for the next few days (scheduled for a 10:00 am start) and decided it would be better to start by 08:30 am to try and complete our work before the heat of the day made working unpleasant. What a good decision this turned out to be!

So, the Saturday and Sunday volunteers turned up by 08:30, the first task being to clear the disco tent following the revelries of the night before.  From the amount of litter in the disco tent, it was apparent that the previous nights had been “good nights” .  After the clearing of the tent, the next area was in front of the main stage, followed by the food area and the toilet area (not the most pleasant of areas to clear!).  By Monday, the campers had broken camp and left, and we started the clearing up of the carpark while contractors commenced their work on dismantling the festival infrastructure (marquees, staging, fencing Portaloos etc).  Tuesday was the busiest day for us.  With most of the infrastructure cleared, it was time for the final “deep clean” of the field where we needed all hands present (11 volunteers) to carry out a sweep of the area and return the field to a pristine condition – which I believe we achieved.

Although hard work, the volunteers enjoyed the weekend, savouring the atmosphere, the sunshine, and chatting with the exceptionally friendly campers who really appreciated what we were doing.  As an added bonus, the festival organisers have always donated to our charitable trust that will help us fund some of our charitable work within the Lutterworth district.  That has to be a win-win.