THE mayor of a town says his legs were ‘cut to ribbons’ by brambles as he retrieved blues festival traffic cones thrown over hedges, ditches and even into his own garden.
Mayor of Upton Jeremy Owenson spent an hour and a half collecting traffic cones which had been thrown over hedges and into fields and ditches on Hanley Road in Upton.
The cones had been put there during the Upton Blues Festival over the weekend to stop people parking on Hanley Road in order to funnel people towards the official car park, a vital source of revenue to keep the free festival going.
DISCARDED: The Mayor of Upton, Jeremy Owenson, recovered the cones designed to stop people parking on Hanley Road in Upton (Image: Jeremy Owenson)
Cllr Owenson, 57, who lives on Hanley Road in Upton, noticed around six cones in his garden at around 7am on Saturday morning when he was about to walk the dog, believing the incident must have taken place overnight.
The mayor, who is also the deputy leader of Malvern Hills District Council, says the bollards are important to stop people parking on the road during the festival, with the £10 charge for parking helping to fund the event which is otherwise free.
Cllr Owenson, a Conservative who represents Upton and Ripple Ward, discovered ‘easily 200 cones’ on both sides of the road had been thrown into ditches or even into farmers’ fields at a time when early harvests are taking place. He was concerned they might get caught up in farm machinery.
ANNOYING: The cones on Hanley Road in Upton were thrown into fields, ditches and even the River Severn (Image: Jeremy Owenson)
“I was traipsing through farmers’ fields and putting them back on the roads. Some idiot had thrown the cones in the river as well. My legs were cut to ribbons.
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” I didn’t realise I was bleeding until I got back to the kitchen and looked down and there was a pool of blood on the kitchen floor,” he said. He believes he must have cut them on thorns and brambles while recovering the cones, having gone out in shorts and flipflops before realising the scale of the problem.
VITAL Upton Blues Festival is important for tourism and the economy of Upton and parking charges help keep the festival free (Image: Newsquest)
Cllr Owenson has only recently had stents fitted six weeks ago to prevent him suffering a heart attack and said, were it not for the ‘amazing’ staff at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester, he could not have returned the cones to their correct positions as, before treatment, he had been ‘completely debilitated’.
He said he had to act quickly because, if one person parked on Hanley Road, ‘everybody would start doing it’. Cllr Owenson said the person who discarded the cones in that way had been ‘inconsiderate’ and that he wanted to support the festival, ‘Europe’s largest free Blues festival’.
In a post on social media, he said: “Please note, the Blues Festival is only free because people pay for parking. Do you want a free festival?”
Although it is understood the incident has not been reported to West Mercia Police, Cllr Owenson said: “I just think it’s a shame. It’s a shame that somebody thinks this doesn’t have consequences. It does have consequences. Somebody has got to fix it.”
