Over the next few days my family and I will be scouring the roadside picking up rubbish as it is Shetland’s Da Voar Redd Up (the Spring clean up) again.

We have volunteered and been registered for cleaning up our road which goes for miles.  We did it last year and try to register every year as part of the island clean-up.

I have noticed there is less litter because I cleared it all so thoroughly last year.  But I still walk either side of the single track roads mostly in the ditches, as that is where the rubbish tends to fall, and manage a bag or so as I go along.  We leave the green bags on the side of the road and someone collects them all, takes them to the dump and sorts them.

I take it as a personal slight when I see a ditch I have “redded up” has litter again.  Don’t people care?  Who honestly throws their rubbish out.  I mean why, just why?

Anyway, I plug a good audiobook in my ears, don my noticeable tabard (this year a yellow plastic bag with arms cut out), grabby hand in one hand, green bin bag in the other and pick up litter cursing humanity as I go for their disgusting habits.  There really is no excuse.

Meanwhile, I also met Daisy riding Kappi out to the canter track and back.

Before we had just been out with me riding Iacs and Daisy on Hjalti.  This was Hjalti’s first ridden canter ever and he was perfect.  He loved it very much.  Happy ears pricked and a spring in his step.  What a good boy.

This is Kappi showing how it’s done.