The inspirational start to the art of binning came in the mid seventies, when Binner Wayne Lang went on a weeklong school trip to Phillip’s House in Dinton, Wiltshire. The week was filled with a number of field trips that were both educational and interesting. One of these trips included a visit to Avebury, a small Wiltshire village partly surrounded by Britain’s largest stone circle - often referred to as ‘Avebury Henge’.

Later, after the passage of some six years, Wayne’s memories of the village and the pre-historic sites that surround it, caused him take a diversion whilst cycling back from his Nan’s in South Wales. Over the next fourteen or so years, he continued to visit the village whenever opportunity reared its head; The last of these occasions being in 1987, when he went accompanied by a small group of friends that included Dave (or Me, as I sometimes refer to myself). It was on this occasion that visits to Avebury became a rather more essential part of both Wayne's and Dave's lives, and rather than being just an occasional curiosity, visited on the way back from somewhere else, it became a deliberate destination, around which other visits fitted in. We have continued to visit the village on a semi regular basis ever since.

The Table below shows a number of key Binner mile-stones

Bunch of Binners

Many have binned over the years but those most adept at the Biniscular art are recorded in the following list:

• Chris Beresford - quiet, thoughtful and funny, you can have a nice chat with him when everyone else is being a tosser.
• Andy Biggar - a Binner legend, quietly gets on with anything - could do the ridgeway without a map and equipped only with a pair of pyjamas, a piece of string, and a set of commercial licence plates.
• Mark Cowper - the lost Binner. The most creative Binner when it came to achieving goals (e.g. copydex for waterproofing an old pair of boots).
• Dave Dunham - a handsome, hyper intelligent, witty and modest, Morris Dancer.
• Neil Dunham - good at spotting practical applications, but lacking in the tools (e.g. the rest of us are incapable) to achieve his desired ends. One of the core Binners, Neil is also one of the keener walkers, having conqured not only the Ridgeway, but also a number of other long distance walks, usually in the company of Wayne..
• Carl Fleischer - artistic and down right strange. Binning was a kind of intersocial performance art, and the Binner Bus equal to anything on show at the Tate Modern.
• Simon Garbet* - another worshipful Binner, making the rest of us eccentric bods seem distinctly normal with his wide range of interests and hobbies, among which, Simon finds time to include Morris Dancing.
• Andy Horwood - another lapsed Binner, now living in Dublin, Andy was one of the early binners, who went on the trip that inspired the whole thing.

Bunch of Binners cont...

• Leppo Marxx** - mysterious man of mystery, looks a lot like my next door neighbour James. Another core member, who has seen it all and done most of it at least twice.
• Wayne Lang - Heart of the Binning art. Doesn't need a map to devise some new, wierd Binner route across country, though when he gets it wrong we make the most of it. His early childhood school trips proved the ultimate Binner inspiration. Wayne is another of the Morris Dancing Binners.
• Aidan Marsh - another practical binner, found cooking sausages and brewing tea in the pissing rain and typhoon force winds on Combe Hill at four o'clock in the morning when everyone else was busy being blown towards Aylesbury.
• Mick O'Sullivan - The enthusiastic heart of the Binners. Can't always make it, but always very enthusiastic about everything we plan to do. Mick started a bit later than Dave, James, Neil and Wayne, but has become an indispensible part of the team.
• Simon Watts - Watty has come late to the Binning art, though, that said, he has clocked up a night in West Kennet, which is the real mark of a bona fide Binner. Simon has been working hard with Mick recently to sort out some Binner walking trips, and at the moment is showing far too much enthusiasm to get things done.

* Simon G only became a Binner by stealth and is not actually aware of his inclusion in the cannon.

** For reasons of poncing about, James Arber has asked that his real name be disguised on this website. In respect of James Arber’s wishes, we have changed his name to Leppo Marxx