Almost 120 banana skins, a pen and three sets of plastic cutlery – just some of the things abandoned on England’s tallest mountain in the last month.
There’s a dedicated band of volunteers who take on the challenge to keep Scafell Pike clean.
People take to social media every year expressing frustration at finding popular beauty spots covered with everything from temporary barbecues, to food packaging, broken glass bottles and even fully abandoned fly-camping set-ups.
While some people believe there are teams of people working to keep the national park clean, in reality, it only has a handful of rangers who do this and often, the task of cleaning up the landscape is left to members of the public or local residents.
It’s also not just the easy access areas that suffer, even England’s tallest mountain – Scafell Pike – is left riddled with litter left by hikers, day in, day out.
Keeping a valley clean is hard task, let alone a mountain, but it’s one that 63-year-old Lindsay Buck, of Gosforth, regularly takes on.
She said: “I’m of an era where you just weren’t allowed to drop litter. There was a lot less single use plastic when I was young and the school I went to the space outside your classroom was yours to keep clean.
“If it was a mess, everyone was sent out and told to tidy up and if you saw someone making a mess, it wasn’t just there’s to clean.
“When I was working I use to collect litter on my way to and from work too. I guess it’s just a habit and it’s not just in Wasdale or up the pike, wherever I go, I just potter around and do it.”
Lindsay’s regular cleaning up of Scafell Pike started in 2020 when she decided to take on a fundraising challenge for Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team to celebrate her 60th birthday.
She set herself the task of summiting Scafell Pike as many times as possible in a year, all the while cleaning it up along the way.
But when the challenge came to an end, the habit stuck and Lindsay now regularly ascends the pike to litter pick, along with a small group of people who work separately to keep the valley and mountain clean.
Lindsay’s litter picking missions led her to gain the nickname the ‘Wasdale Womble’ which has now evolved into a hashtag on social media used by the growing community of people helping clean up in the Wasdale area.
She added: “The mess left behind is from a small minority, but with the amount of people coming here, it can make a big impact.
“I’m a fell runner, so for my training I use my bike to ride to the valley and then I go up and back down the pike and that’s me for the day.
“I don’t do go up every day, but I do it quite a lot. There’s a real community effort now to keep the valley and pike clean and there are a few of us doing it.
“But with me being retired, I’ve just got a lot of time on my hands to do it.”
Lindsay’s litter picking on the mountain is also supported by Mick Pearce, who regularly helps clean up the mountain at different times of the day.
The pair communicate on the routes they take to ascend the mountain and this way, they are able to cover more ground.
Lindsay added: “Mick posts some of his litter finds online and we’ve always been doing it in parallel. He’ll tend to go up in the afternoon and I tend to go in the morning. But he’s a person that puts a hell of a lot of effort into it.
“People do leave some bizarre things but a positive thing is that a lot of clothes are left, and they get washed and sent to a charity shop, which raises a couple of hundred pounds worth of Gift Aid every year.
“I also once found a fully new tent, a sleeping bag, few tins of beans and tuna. It all got dried out by the National Trust and they sold it and mountain rescue took a third of the proceeds. The sleeping bag went to Calderwood House in Egremont and we ate the tuna and beans.”
Lindsay said she also often finds litter hidden beneath rocks at the top of the mountain.
She added: “Some people do think that leave no trace means if you hide it, it’s not there.
“I think there’s also a massive gap in understanding that banana skins, orange peel and pistachio shells are biodegradable, when they actually take a long time to break down.
“I’ve collected around 119 banana skins last month alone from just the pike. Food gets left up there a lot too, I think people think something will eat it, but Herdwicks don’t like kebabs, do they?”
As part of her litter picking, Lindsay also logs some of the rubbish she finds to keep track of how much she is collecting.
In June alone, she has collected a functioning biro, five hats, a buff neck-warmer, a headband, two sets of gloves and socks, a gold fork, a pumpkin plate, torch and three complete sets of plastic forks and spoons as well as a flask.
She said: “I log plastic bottles, banana skins and cans and post on Facebook about it, because it’s all right saying ‘there’s loads of litter’ but without really knowing the numbers, it’s hard to picture.
“I do recycle what I can, so the cans go to the air ambulance because one of the mountain rescue volunteers asked me to keep the cans so they could keep them and send them off, as I think aluminium still has some value. It’s a really positive thing to be able to do.
“The National Trust staff are always great at taking in the non-recyclables I find, as I can take the recyclables home and deal with them.”
When she’s out climbing Scafell Pike or spending time outdoors – Lindsay also takes the time to help educate others on leaving no trace.
She said: “If we don’t get people educated, then we’re not doing so well as a society. Without that awareness of fly camping, of safety with dogs around sheep and not leaving anything behind, people don’t know better.
“A lot of people who visit don’t know about the Countryside Code, but there’s a lot of people coming to the pike and that’s a chance for them to start a good habit.
“If people come off the Three Peaks Challenge and say oh Ben Nevis was a mess, I say well did you pick anything up and they say no, I say well when you go up Snowdon take a bag.
“It’s almost like a lightbulb goes off in their head, for many people it doesn’t occur to them that they could be part of the solution. But most people are really receptive and they want to know what they can do better.
“I just want to normalise it. The army has a saying that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept and I think everyone should try to follow that more.”
According to a 2021 study, around a quarter of people visiting the Lake District admit to leaving litter behind and more than half expect to find litter bins even in the remotest valleys and fells.
Think you know how to leave no trace? Read our story on how to do it properly.
