AN ABERDOUR man has welcomed an agreement from Fife Council to clear a roadside near the village after 25 years of doing the job himself.

Glyn Chadwick picked up his litter picker and bin bags soon after moving to West Fife from Greater Manchester in 1999 after being left saddened at the mess on the route from Aberdour to Burntisland.

A quarter of a century on, he is hoping the job will now be carried out by the local authority after receiving assurances that teams will regularly check for rubbish and clear it when needed.

"I am 70 in December and it has become a really worry because I have been doing it so long it has more or less a little obsession, but sooner or later I am going to have to pack in," he said.

Dunfermline Press: Glyn Chadwick who has been clearing a verge near Aberdour for 25 years.Glyn Chadwick who has been clearing a verge near Aberdour for 25 years. (Image: Contributed)

"What they have said is they are going to check it every six weeks. It remains to be seen if they will actually clear the litter. They might decide to wait until it build up until it is horrendous. We have to hope and pray they don't."

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Glyn reckons the number of sack loads of rubbish he's cleared over the years will be "getting into the thousands".

He continued: "If I do the full route once a month, it is ten sacks each time. It is quite a number.

"The place I came from in Greater Manchester, that had become an eye sore all around where I lived. I was asked to move up here with my job and it was moving to paradise in comparison.

"I got a shock when I drove along that road to Kirkcaldy because it was such a beautiful place and yet the verges were covered in cans and bottles and that was it. Almost as soon as I moved here, I started.

"I got loads of sacks, asked the council to move them and they wanted £25 off me to move it. Eventually I had complained to a manager at the council and that was the start of the relationship. He had a totally different attitude. He thanked me for everything and offered to support me."

Glyn's voluntary work in the area has won him a string of community awards, but he admits there has been one "flaw" in his record when he got on the wrong side of the law when youths were destroying an area at Silver Sands with their vehicle.

"A resident of the village had phoned me up to say Silver Sands was being wrecked by motorists doing 'doughnuts' in the field," he explained.

"I got the lady to phone the police and I went down there with the chair of the community council. We kept phoning the police and waited the best part of two hours.

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"I confronted these people and it got out of hand. I threatened them. There was a sledgehammer in the car and I pulled it out. It was not my proudest moment so there is a flaw in my record.

"The sheriff admonished me. His words were there comes the time that enough is enough and he could understand my frustration.

"It was a very stressful year because of the pandemic, it took a year for me to get to court.

"It was a lesson learned. I do regret it but it was extenuating circumstances."

While the council has pledged to take over his previous route, Glyn is not planning on hanging up his litter picker just yet.

"I am just not wired like that," he said. "I do Clockluine Road still – you have to be careful along it. I also do along the A921 from Aberdour to Aldi in Dalgety Bay.

"I tend to go out early. In the summer months, I could be out at 4am. There's not much traffic, or hardly any traffic, so it is a safety thing."