Doing our bit and having fun on the beach.

 HI
Hope everyone is well and doing ok. Finally January has ended, that's us two thirds through winter, Yea.
Yesterday we decided to get of our arse and do something useful. We being me , my daughter Bethany and her long term partner Tristan.
Thanks to a friend on facebook i was notified of a beach clean in our community. It was at a beach i used to go to when i was a kid Kilintrigan and Knock bay Portpatrick. Now it had been a while and i was slightly unsure exactly where the turn of was.

 I gave myself plenty of time , which ment i got there an hour early, typical. It was good though as i had completely forgotton just how beautiful the bay was . It was windy abit but glorious sunshine bathed the whole place in winter sun.
People turned up and i recognised a few.It was organised but not military style . We all waited a while till people gathered and because of the tide being in drove of to a different access.
Portpatrick not being my immediate local area ment i got to see places
that i was unfamiliar with and what a beautiful area.
It did mean going over the umpteen cattlegrids again and some of them are abit worse for wear.
Killintrigan has a lovely private lighthouse and in 1982 was the site of the Craiggauntlet shipwrecking, directly below the lighthouse.
I saw it when it had just happened but there is hardly anything left of the wreck now. For years after hard yellow foam washed up along the whole beach and i even found small pieces still on the beach amongst the marram grass.

We found the entrance to knock bay and walked down to the beach. Litter pickers were given out along with gloves and hoops for the bin bags . We met some of the main organisers Kelly Monteith and her dad Tommy and Gordon Mc Kee who with his lovely 23 year old jeep cherrokee and trailer carted the picked rubbish up to where the council could pick it up

It was really nice and relaxed , plenty of chatting and the hours sped by without being noticed . The fantastic weather ment most of us were abit cooked . Being sensible we had all put plenty of layers on.
Bag after bag was collected .Cotton bud s i think being the most obvious amongst the seaweed and the hardest to pick up. Plastic drinks bottles , fish boxes, toys , tennis ballls even shoes bespoiled this lovely beach.
There was so much at times it was quite dispairing and i would go for big stuff and then pick up the little stuff Just to give myself some difference.
What was lovely to hear while chatting to people was the reason most of them were there. It wasn't for a change to make the beach prettier for people . The enviroment and the effects on wildlife were the biggest reasons.
The range of people were really mixed , retired and business owners , walkers etc . I heard one man talking about the ways he is dealing with packageing in his b and b and something as simple as having a jug of milk in the fridge rather than the individual sachets of milk in the rooms will make a huge difference if more people do it.
A butty van owner is trying to bring paper packaging into his business but finding the price difference difficult. Worrying that customers will not like the price rise that will have to come .
people not having coffee to go now but sitting in or just waiting till home time. Water bottles being refilled rather than just dump and buy another.

 What is the most noticeable thing is that these are not eco warriers , they are normal everyday people who really care about the enviroment and want to do their bit ,. They are changing the way they live and doing the likes of this beach clean to try and make a difference .
I looked at them when they were on the beach and thought wow the message is working , people are listening and if worthwhile groups like these can be supported by us and us just helping ,maybe the difference they make here will make a difference everywhere.

 I have spent many hours on my local beaches . I fuelled my rayburn and wood burning stove of the wood washed up, Fence stabs were made and buildings built from what we found on the beach. Our pets never wanted for a tennis ball .scoops for the chicken food . Baskets for firewood and many many fish boxes put to many uses were all found on them. We collected and disposed of plastics all the time , but i used to dispair that with every tide more would come in and think what we did was just a waste of time , a fruitless exercise .

 We really need to start thinking about what goes in to the sea. Balloons , net , lighters .all cause harm to the animals in the sea. Entanglement is what i saw in nets and rope and fishing line. Birds drowned fish suffocated . Seal carcasses with net embedded in their skin.

But at the beach clean i had a sense of hope and pride in our community.That we will do something , we won't sit back and do nothing till its to late .

 These are micro plastics , well the largest of the micro plastics. Right a long the ebbing tide a band of beads and bits. These can be mistaken for food by sealife and  really harm them. This is going to be the hardest stuff to get off the beach..

 What a beautiful place to spend an afternoon. I did hear that there will be a beach clean at Portlogan beach hopefully next week . Now that beach is awful with plastic and it will take many beach cleans to just reduce the backlog.

Everybody was getting stuck in , not just on the beach but the plastics caught in the briars and marram grass.

This is just a tiny bit of what everybody collected. Two big trailers were collected at the point where i had to go and people were still collecting.
Unfortunately the basket was too broken to reuse or it would have been in my boot. They are really useful for loads of reasons but an unbroken one is like finding hens teeth and gold ones at that.
Well everybody , i had a great afternoon and i think you would too so please if you hear of a beach clean give it a go. Or if you are on a beach , maybe pick some up yourself and find a council bin to put it in. It really is one of those things that every little helps . And people power can be amazing when it gets its teeth in to something. Well all the best and thanks for reading , night night everybody.