Either by walking along the coastal path with my family or wanting a quiet spot to have lunch, we would always stumble across Porth Trecastell. I loved it because it was quite remote; sometimes we would have the whole beach to ourselves! It was a bitter-sweet moment for me when I found out the beach clean was going to be based here. I have so many happy memories there, and so I was hoping that we wouldn’t find any litter. But, in my mind I knew we would not leave this beach without it.
From young children armed with litter pickers to marine mammal medics, the North Wales Africa Society and local people scouring the entire length of beach. Everyone joined in with the search!
Everyone was so focused and driven to find all the litter they could, and this can be clearly seen in some of the photographs I took during the event. No one would take their eyes off the ground. Groups would be shuffling along the sand together, stopping every minute or so to collect the litter found. Others would search within the dunes and by the cliffs, and a few would walk round to the next bay only to return with their bag weighing heavier than before. There’s something so uplifting in watching people clean up the planet!
During the beach clean, I swapped my camera for a litter picker and searched the shore myself. Fishing gear became the first item to end up in my collection bag, and this was later joined by small parts of hard plastic, rope and plastic bottle caps! I quickly realised that shovelling layers of seaweed along the seaweed bank uncovered even more litter underneath – this seaweed bank was essentially a bed of litter. Because of this, I decided to focus my efforts there and collected as much litter as I could.
