29th February

 

What a difference a couple of weeks makes... A warm sunny walk on the beach, blue skies and (almost) blue seas... and very little marine litter,  just the patches of the usual debris still collected at the top of the tide at the foot of the cliff. The wide expanses of sand are spotlessly clean.

Rolf finds a nice wildlife trap but loses it in the sea...


low tide: 08.54 hrs 0.9m, high tide: 15.29 hrs 2.4m
time of arrival: 12.13 hrs

weather: hazy sunshine, wind SW 6mph, temperature 14c
marine litter: very little

 

 

6th September

 It's a wild day to start walking at the edge.

The winds are near gale force (though from the south so it's not cold) and the rain is persistent and near horizontal. The wind whips the sand into the air - I can only take photos with my back to the wind - and holding onto my bags of rubbish (especially once filled with polystyrene) is no mean feat! It's a sizeable and messy haul: lots of lightweight items, flung across the beach by the wind - sand is everywhere...

 Unable to walk south back into the sand and wind, I take the cliff path home.

low tide: 12.00 hrs, 0.8m; high xx hrs 2.5m 

time of arrival: 13.03 hrs

weather: rain, wind SW 24mph, gusting to 38mph, temperature 17c
marine litter: lots of lightweight items such as polystyrene (large pieces),  plastic bags and packaging but also quite a few cans too.

I imagined that the winds would wash vast quantities of debris onto the beach but my haul consists mainly of large pieces of polystyrene, remnants of sanitary towels and plastic bags (popular with snails, it seems...). And, of course, the occasional balloon. There is also an unusual amount of litter left by visitors to the beach - evidence, I am sure, of beach fishing in the previous days...