RUBBISH, building rubble and a knife were among the items strewn across school playing fields after travellers left Portland.

Gulls started picking apart the black bags abandoned on the Royal Manor playing field yesterday and residents found children’s car seats among the litter spread around the site.

The travellers were issued a notice to move and yesterday left to go to the steam fair.

After leaving, one of the men from the group of caravans admitted they left bin bags behind but said the pile of building waste must have been left by fly-tippers and any faeces must have been left by dog walkers.

Weston resident Cynthia Tarrant, 65, said the litter was ‘disgusting’.

She said: “For one thing it lowers the standard of the area.

“It’s the mess mainly and it is on a school field. They don’t pay council tax and they are allowed to get away with it.

“We aren’t allowed to exercise our dogs there.”

Other residents said the adults among the travellers were rarely seen except for the men going to the toilet. One said they saw two people heading towards the hedges in their dressing gowns.

A table knife and a gas cylinder were among the items found on the children’s artificial pitch.

The school caretaker has been repairing the broken fence.

Resident Neville Walbridge, 72, was astonished as he walked on to the fields for the first time after the travellers left at around lunchtime.

He said he has emailed the minister for the environment and called for boulders to be placed around the boundary to try and prevent travellers using the site again.

He said: “I’ve never seen anything like it.

“Look what they’ve done to the kids’ pitch.”

Some of the same travellers first arrived at the car park on Portland Beach Road.

They were then evicted from a field at Osprey Quay over fears that the coastguard helicopter could be grounded if pilots felt the travellers were too close and could be injured.

John Kelly is one of the travellers who has been at all three sites.

He said they did not leave any rubble and any faeces found on the site must have been left by dogs owned by residents.

He said: “Somebody must have been in there fly-tipping.

“We left some plastic bags as we didn’t know where to put them.

“We left them for the council to pick them up.

“While we were there we used the public toilets.”

A 'quick' clean up of land

THE Royal Manor Arts College playing fields are owned by Dorset County Council.

A county council spokesman said they issued the travellers with a notice to quit the land and vacate the area by Friday.

She said in the event of the caravans not being moved by then legal action would have been the next step.

And she added that the rubbish was due to be cleaned up this morning.

Weymouth and Portland Borough Council is responsible for refuse collection and a spokesman said their staff would be cleaning up on behalf of the county council.

Councillor Ian Roebuck, borough spokesman for the environment, said: “We are organising people to clear up.

“We’ve moved in as fast as we can.”