The Clean Up Squad

It’s a well-known fact that EFOG members like to get down and dirty.

This year we have already helped to dredge the Eagle Pond at Snaresbrook with the City of London, chipped away at the iceberg of rubbish thrown into Aldersbrook Wood with Redbridge Council and dug out ditches for the Chigwell Riding Trust for the Disabled.

A project much closer to home though is the ROVSCO Scout hut wherein we hold our weekly meetings.  Owned by the Rover Scouts, it is now used by quite a number of groups, so EFOG campaigned to get the yard area of the hut cleaned up, with a view to painting the outside at a future date.  We made it a joint effort with our fellow hut-users, not only so that we could get to see them at long last, but also to make sure we did not throw anything away that belonged to them!  Both the Scouts and the Girl Guides came armed with tools and gloves and we all set too.

The particular area of concern was the left hand side of the hut – a den of mystery, usually covered in brambles that we hack back on a yearly basis.

An old stove was fairly obvious to see, but there also turned out to be a number of items of sporting equipment, various bags of part used food items and a whole variety of other ‘stuff’!   Don Stevens, the hut caretaker brought down his tow trailer and the workers soon began filling it with bags of mystery trash for the first of several trips to the local recycling centre.  When the main bulk of the rubbish was cleared away, the hardier members also dug out the roots of the brambles and the area was prepped for turf, fingers crossed that the brambles would not re-invade.

While all this was going on, the Guides set too and cleaned the kitchen area thoroughly.  They also made the tea for the workers (thank you!) then cleaned the inside of the hall – an end to many a dead long-legger and cobweb!  The Scouts mended the fence and cleaned up the main gate area and the spare Efoggers turned to with those pesky brambles again, trimming and tidying not only the garden area but the pit at the right hand side of the hut where much of the previous bramble bash’s remains had now rotted down to manageable proportions.

Chairman Jim called a halt to works at lunchtime.  A stack was made of the larger items, that were to be collected by a Guides representative with a much larger truck, and the workers all adjourned for a wash and brush up and lunch.