Litter picking hero Kym collects rubbish and a pogo stick!

Village litter-picking champion Kym Bannister is determined to clean up the countryside around his home in Great Raveley.

Since the start of the year, Kym, aged 63, with help from his partner Pamela, launched his campaign to clear the grass verges and fields of rubbish around the Ramsey area. 

He and Pamela have managed to collect an incredible 55 bags of rubbish, plus odd items such as a bike, car battery, kitchen tops, pogo stick and large flood light.  

Kym said: “In January 2020 while on a village walk in Great Raveley, I was appalled by the amount of rubbish thrown out of cars onto our road sides polluting the ditches and hedgerows and I decided to start clearing it up.

Kym says he donned his high-vis jacked and a litter-picker he bought at a car boot sale and got to work.

“I had a picker and a Hi Vis jacket both from a car boot sale and plenty of bags which my late father had collected over the years, and so on a dry January say, I started 
from my home and worked my way west, picking for four hours and filling four big 
bags.

"I continued the picking if the weather was fine slowly working my way West to the parish boundary which is 1.5 miles away. Along with the usual cans bottles sandwich wrappings and crisp packets I was finding car wheels, tyres, childrens' buggies, down pipes, asbestos, and discarded road signs, so not just items thrown out the window rubbish but fly tipping as well."

Kym’s partner Pamela Hunt, 62 from Ramsey, lost her brother on April 6, 2020. He contracted coronavirus and died at Peterborough City Hospital. 

Pamela said she walks to see John’s grave, which is 500 yards from her in Muchwood Lane, Ramsey and was appalled to see how much rubbish was discarded along the roadside.

On a Sunday in January she and Kym spent two hours filling three bags of rubbish, which Kym then took home.  

In the short 500 yards to John’s grave, they eventually collected 44 bags of rubbish.