A SMASHED-up caravan and piles of rubbish dumped by travellers in Inkberrow are spoiling the picturesque village, an angry councillor claims.

Audrey Steel is blaming travellers, who set up camp near Withybed Lane, for the mess.

The group left at the weekend, after more than a fortnight camped out on the side of the A442.

Now, the village - whose pub The Old Bull is a model for The Bull in Radio 4's The Archers - has been left counting the cost. The caravan is almost flattened and oil drums, milk cartons and other rubbish is strewn across the site.

To make matters worse, Mrs Steel said, an E-reg Ford Escort had been dumped in a field of standing crop and flipped over on to its roof.

"It's the third car in a fortnight to be dumped here," she fumed.

"One of them was on a footpath, right next to the phone box in the middle of the village.

"And the caravan's got its roof caved in.

"There's bags of rubbish everywhere, even an old wheelbarrow without its wheel - everything you could imagine.

"And who knows what's in the adjoining fields?

"I dread to think what the farmer's going to find there when he comes to harvest his crop. It's a horrible, horrible mess."

Rosemary Kennedy, who runs the village post office, said the site looked "like a corporation tip".

"It doesn't paint a very good picture for people driving through the village on the way to Stratford or Redditch," she added.

Mrs Steel, county councillor for Inkberrow and Cookhill, said she had fielded calls from angry villagers wanting the eyesores removed, and had contacted the local authority to ask for a clean-up.

A spokesman for Wychavon District Council said: "FOCSA, the contractor that collects abandoned vehicles, yesterday had instruction to collect them. It will be done as soon as possible."