A Tooting resident has pulled a motorbike out of the Wandle in an attempt to clean up the area.

Rocco Mogliarisi, an Italian nurse who works at St George's Hospital, wanted to not only make the area look nicer, but also to ensure that the motorbike didn't impact the wildlife within the river.

Rocco, 30, and his friend were walking through Wandle Park alongside the river and decided to go for a dip to make the most of the scorching sun. This is when he saw the Honda motorbike - not for the first time - and decided that enough was enough.

It quickly became evident that it wasn't a two-man job though, as Rocco explains.

He told Nub News : "Well I had a day off, it was sunny outside so I decided to go for a swim in the Wandle with a friend. When we arrived it was beautiful and we saw this motorbike in the middle of the river.

"We started to laugh talking about how this could have happened. I had seen it a few times on this walk but it was always kind of cold so I didn't want to get in and get it out.

"So we just decided to get rid of it.

"My mate and I saw a local person hanging out in his garage and he saw us. We engaged in a conversation and explained what we wanted to do, so he lent us a rope.

"Then it was funny; I removed my clothes, got in and it was all muddy, we tied the rope and tried pushing and pulling for a good half an hour."

"We couldn't manage very well so we stopped a local fisherman and he just decided to give us a hand and we managed to pull it off.

"It was a hard job. The bike was pretty heavy, there were three people - could you imagine trying to push it out on a slant?"

All jokes aside, pulling the motorbike out of the river was more than just a little bit of fun for Rocco and his friend on his day off. He understands that these kinds of things have an impact on the environment, which is why he cares so much to pull it out of the river.

He added: "We had a lot of fun and at the same time, we tried to make the place look better.

"I'm not a very grim person so I plan on tidying up a little bit. There's a lot of stuff going into the river and we just want to clean it up.

"The air is not very clean around here in general, and I live here so I want it to be better.

"All the human actions in the modern world directly impact the whole ecosystem.

"All the actions have brought a big change in this planet which resulted in many environmental problems."

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