OXFORDSHIRE is a dirty county. You can see that clearly in the dead of winter when the bare bones of trees reveal ‘trash-troves’.

One hot spot is the Oxford ring road, especially the Rose Hill area where people use even the small central reservation as a tip. The city has several ‘grot spots’ and the rot has spread throughout the county.

Now the ‘greener cleaner Incredibles’ are fighting back. In Banbury the Bretch Hill estate had a litter blitz last month organised by Cherwell District Council with local residents rolling up their sleeves.

The Wolvercote Commoners are calling for volunteers to show their love is like a red rose and clean up the village green on Valentine’s Day.

The Oxford Civic Society and The Oxford Times have arranged the eighth annual OxClean on March 6 and 7 for more than 1,000 volunteers.

Patrick Coulter has volunteered in the past for the Highfield litter pick in Headington. He said: “And I’ll do it again this year, but it seems to be a rerun of the same old film where you could round up the usual suspects. We pick up tons of trash and cigarette stubs mostly outside pubs and bus stops.

“We have asked Oxford City Council for the past five years whether they could set up a voluntary code for pubs and the bus companies to take an active interest in the environment and clean up around them each day.

They could get a sticker issued by the city council and put it in their windows saying they care about the environment and take care of the community.

“The council leaders always say it’s a good idea but they never do anything. Why not?”

One volunteer from last year, 10-year old Joseph Rea, enjoyed the social side of the annual event so much he wrote a poem about it called Litter-A-C: Saturday was the local litter pick.

We gathered like a squadron of planes ready to attack, equipped with bin liner parachutes, gloves, reflective vests and remote rubber jaws. Our mission: to eliminate rubbish from bush, road and pavement.

Our swelling bag told stories of bad manners and disregard, But also of mislaid possessions: an identity card, (Who is Jill Dunn and what has she done?) A baby’s dummy, (“Where has little Jimmy’s dummy gone?) Crisp packets, Tin cans, Plastic bags, Cigarette butts, Broken pens, Elastic bands, Cable tidies, Bagged-up dog mess and Lolly sticks.

When our bags were extra-full, Our road super-smart and our stomachs horribly hollow, We warmed ourselves at Gillian’s – Drinks, chocolate, chatter, And swapped stories of our campaign.

Are annual litter blitzes enough?

One group that looks after the SS Mary and John Churchyard in East Oxford takes a weekly approach and has volunteers kneeling and pruning each Wednesday for two hours.

Ruth Ashcroft is a mainstay of the group in charge of the churchyard.

“It was generally closed for burials some time ago and became overgrown with twelve foot high bramble bushes but now it’s a wildlife park.

“We knew how important the site was from the graves that told a story of the area and the community wanted to reclaim it in 2000. Now we have wild flower meadows, spring bulbs and wildlife with bees, birds and butterflies.

“The cemetery was established during the 1870s in a mainly working class area with a workhouse that had 330 inmates.

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“Cowley was a close-knit community then, but by the 1960s most of the original families had moved away. So in the 1970s the churchyard all changed.

“There were drug dealing dens and alcoholics camping out here and since the churchyard was located right on the Cowley Road, there was a certain amount of antisocial behaviour.

I remember some of that antisocial behaviour. A ‘white witch’ contacted me some years ago and told me groups of ‘anti-Christ worshippers’ met in one particular grove in the churchyard.

She described some of the rituals that had taken place there and insisted I go and investigate.

We walked there together at dusk and she led me to a hidden corner of the churchyard where we found a campfire and some people who may have been on drugs walking around.

Suddenly a man came up to me from out of the blue and just stared at me with these eyes that were not blue, brown or green, but blazing chartreuse, a luminescent, transparent colour; and they seemed to flash.It was almost comic, except he wasn’t.

Here I was, standing in a churchyard glen in the gloaming, listening to someone talk about the power of the rituals and cars were honking on the Cowley Road a hundred yards away in the rush hour.

What world was I in?

Ruth Ashcroft told me “The churchyard is a different place now, a wildlife oasis in the middle of a dense area.”

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