St Mellons/Trowbridge Border Clean Up success; 59 rubbish bags and 4 tonnes in 2 Friday Morning Events

Over two Friday mornings, the Cardiff Friday Mornings Environmental Project managed to clear up an amazing haul from this small borderland greenspace.


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This included 59 bags of rubbish of which there was 12 recycling and 3 glass bags, and over 4 tonnes of other fly tipping of which most of this was a flytipped garden renovation project including bricks, soil, plants, paving slabs, cable, glass and other bits of concrete. It was a terrible sight in several areas before we started, but looked magnificent after we left. On both occassions, this was removed by Cardiff Council's Parks Waste Services.



Rubble site before:


Rubble site after:


Other items included 7 tyres, 1 bike, carpets, kitchen tiles, glass mirrors, toilet, kitchen furniture, cupboards, deep fat fryer, a beer pump, a cistern, picture frame, a firedoor, a chair, a traffic cone, watering can, scaffolding pole, golf bag, a school bag, 2 wallets, insides of a freezer, a childrens trike, plastic piping, bits of a shed, old decking, a mattress, rocking horse, car battery, garden waste including grass clippings and conifer cuttings, a wardrobe, a box of needles and 2 ubiquitous TESCO trolleys.

Den-like jumble sale clothes mess before:

Den-like jumble sale clothes mess after:


Rubbish piles:





One local resident mentioned that he used to catch tadpoles in the stream as a youngster and that the area was prone to flooding. Looking at the stream, this wasn’t surprising as we couldn’t find the drains or pipes as they must be under silt, soil or rubbish. So hopefully we will do a little digging and see what we can find.

Cardiff Friday Mornings Environmental Project Volunteer and Litter Champion Dave King said “It was great to see so many people out on Friday Mornings helping to clear out such a litter hotspot. Its a shame really because it is a such a nice spot. Hopefully, our work here can help to regain local pride in the site and increase ownership for the right reasons”.

Later in the year and in partnership with the Parks Department we will be cutting back the vegetation to reopen the paths and along the stream to try and return the area to past glories.

Event: CFMEP Clear up vandalised trees in Llanrumney

This Friday, 26th August, we'll meet at
10 am Llanrumney Playcentre off Braunton Crescent (The Barn).


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Some local people have been cutting down some lovely trees in the woods here, very badly. Today, we'll perform remedial work on some vandalised trees in the woods here and will brash up and stack the wood neatly.

All tools and equipment will be provided but bring sturdy shoes and clothes suitable for the conditions.

For further information call Chris on 07717 412 270.

Sofa removal from the Taff in Hailey Park

A sofa was recently spotted and reported to us by several members of the public, which had beached itself near the banks in Hailey Park.

We responded to this and called up Penny from Friends of Hailey Park and we organised an impromptu clean up.

Penny, Matt, Sue with her 2 children Sam and Megan and I donned our wellies waders, gloves, litterpickers, grappel hooks and rope and headed down the steep slope to the Taff.

The Sofa was stinking, literally, had a mass of water in it which meant we had to use the grappel hook to pull pieces of the sofa apart.

We then physically pulled, tore, sawed, axed and knifed the sofa into pieces so we could take it away. Some of this was bagged up and others were dragged up the hill after being attached to our rope or grappel hooks.

We repeated this with the large metal piping and finally, we dragged everything and everyone upto the top of the bank.

The 7 bags, loose bits of flat packed sofa and the metal posts were taken away by Cardiff Councils' Parks Waste Services.

RCMA Orchards Froes GPS handy

Today I paid an afternoon's visit to RCMA's amazing and vibrant Riverside Community Allotments in Pontcanna. It was a 3-pronged visit, with one faulty tine, but at least there's a great excuse to go back again.

The first part of the visit was to demonstrate how valuable a froe is for splitting wood. There are several ovens which the group collectively built here, all of which can burn wood as a fuel. Currently, a small hand axe is used to split the wood. I suggested they try a froe last time I visited, so I brought one along this time. Both Jenny and Matt were instand converts. We use the froe a lot when working with children as it is a safe and accurate way of splitting wood. It is also very useful if you are trying to make a more uniform charcoal, which no doubt the group will attempt at some point in time. I blew off my froeing cobwebs to make sure all was well, then demonstrated it to Jenny and Matt.

Once they both got into it, they could hardly stop with Matt especially the RCMA whackarat grand champion as the following picture shows:

The second part of the day was to support the Cardiff Orchard Project in a high tech way. Some time ago, I mentioned to Jenny that I'd GPS waymarked an apple tree for her Cardiff Orchard Project. I started using a GPS years ago when performing woodland survey work at Westonbirt Arboretum, then footpath mapping with Monmouthshire County Council and Japanese knotweed surveying for Torfaen County Borough Council. It is a very quick and accurate way of reporting a multitude of data which can be easily incorporated into GIS systems, or for me now more likely Google Maps for marking fly tipping, litter collection points or just meeting points for events. The Cardiff Orchard Project aims to show us just how much food is growing around us in Cardiff. There is a website here and a Googlemap here and I said I would help to see if GPS technology could augment the Cardiff Orchard Project. The first part of the session was to see if a GPS would be a practical asset for the project, so we walked along and waymarked 4 fruit trees on the allotment site. We returned to the laptop and uploaded the data into Garmin's basic Mapsource software and exported them into Google Earth. The accuracy of the GPS on such a cloudy day stunned them. From Google Earth we then exported the trees as a .kml file to the hard drive, then uploaded the .kml file into a back-up of the Cardiff Orchard Google Map. The Results are below and they were bang on and simple to do:

All in all a great afternoon. The Riverside Community Allotments in Pontcanna are open Wednesdays and Fridays at this time of the year and anyone is welcome to pop along. For more info visit their website here or look them up on Facebook.

For those of you still reading, the third prong was meant to be photographing bumblebees that have nested in one of the sheds that the group have been diligently policing since we had a joint clean up operation earlier in the year. Possitive identification of the bumblebee will help them to work out what best to do with the nest.

Event: Friday 19th August 10am Trowbridge/St. Mellons Border Clean meet Trefaser Crescent

This Friday, we'll be carrying on the great work from last weeks amazing clean up. Altogether the 13 of us pulled out 1.5 tonnes of rubbish and 33 bags of rubbish. All of this was taken away by the Parks Waste Services Department.



We aim to meet again at 10 am on Trefaser Crescent and will try and clear as much of the fly tipping as possible in our 2 hours. We will also try and dig out and find the drain that is holding up the stream. It looks like a tough one so make sure you have your 4-Weetabix.

Best to bring sturdy shoes and clothing suitable for the conditions. Other tools will be provided.


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Any problems or questions call Chris on 07717 412 270 or chris.partridge@keepwalestidy.org