by Skibbereen Tidy Towns
It has been unseasonably mild this winter and indeed, although it’s not yet the end of February, spring has certainly sprung. That’s not to say that the threat of frost and snow has passed, since March is typically known as the month of ‘many weathers‘ and isn’t there a saying that goes something like ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb‘? Nevertheless, these couple of months have been excellent for Saturday morning events and here’s a look back at what has been accomplished thanks to a dedicated bunch of volunteers.
On 22 December we were lucky enough to be able to complete the North Street riverside rejuvenation project with the planting of the native Irish whitebeam trees under the expert guidance of Michael Burke. The following Saturday, still in December, one of our volunteers undertook a major alcohol litter pick of a blackspot along Chapel Lane.
January started with another Saturday morning litter pick that took three of our volunteers through the Main Street car park, across the road, and along the river walk to Bridge Street. The resulting collection was quite a sight for sore eyes, have a look for yourself.
Saturday, 12 January, was a much nicer event with 12 volunteers engaged for a couple of hours weeding the sloped bank at the top of Mardyke and planning a bug hotel for our adopted pollinator plot courtesy of Cork County Council. We haven’t actually built the bug hotel yet but we have all the materials and it’s on our growing spring list if anyone is interested in helping with it.
Some of our volunteers have been lucky enough to assist with apple tree planting at various locations across the town as part of the Appletown project, the brainchild of the above mentioned Michael Burke, watch out for more on the Appletown story very soon.
In February, we continued a series of ‘weed & sweep’ events along the approach roads to the town, covering quite some distance along the Schull road, Mill (Hospital) road and most recently, the Gortnaclohy bypass road. This initiative involves clearing the kerbsides of grass and weed growth eliminating the requirement for weedkiller spraying by Cork County Council. Of course, this involves considerable amounts of manual effort by volunteers during the growing season and we are very interested in natural alternatives to weedkiller, so watch this space.
The riverside walk along by Inse Alainn, Newbridge Park and Riverdale makes up part of the Abbey Loop walk and we spent a couple of pleasurable Saturday mornings cutting back briar growth and general maintenance including litter picking. The highlight for some of us was the use of this ‘mean machine’ courtesy of Skibbereen Tool Hire, pictured below to edge the pathways.
Finally, for now at least, we arranged for hedge cutting along the main approach roads into Skibbereen for two days in February just ahead of the bird nesting season – phew! The work of Tidy Towns is certainly #NotJustLitterPicks ☑️
We cannot close this blog post without offering our thanks to the sitting councillors from the West Cork municipal district who responded favourably to ours and Bantry Tidy Towns’ request to support Councillor Danny Collins’ motion to refrain from displaying election posters within the 50km speed zones of all West Cork towns and villages. We are delighted to report that the councillors had ‘a good debate on the motion‘ to quote Cllr. Declan Hurley and we trust that all political party and independent candidates for the upcoming local and European elections will follow this lead. For more information on how to support the #PosterFree #PassOnPlastic nationwide environmental campaign please follow this link.
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If you are interested in becoming involved with Skibbereen Tidy Towns please contact us at 087-6220132 or by email at skibbereentidytowns@icloud.com.
Featured image courtesy of Pixabay
Skibbereen Tidy Towns 