Proud to Support the Great British Beach Clean

From Friday 16th to Monday 19th September thousands of volunteers, me included, took to the shores across the UK for the Beachwatch Great British Beach Clean.

Beachwatch is a national beach cleaning and litter surveying programme run by the Marine Conservation Society, which champions the need for marine wildlife protection, sustainable fisheries and clean seas and beaches.   Some of our best-loved marine wildlife is under threat from the waste and litter in our seas, with hundreds of species accidentally eating or becoming entangled in litter, and Beachwatch helps people across the UK understand and care for their coastline. 

I was delighted to represent Suffolk Secrets on a grey but warm Saturday morning to help clean the beach at Southwold.  The event was organised and funded by local iconic brewery Adnams and was well supported by nearly 100 volunteers.

We were welcomed to The Crown Hotel at 10am for refreshments and given a briefing about how the event would be run.  We then took to the beach at Gun Hill, working in small teams to collect the litter from the beach and record our findings.  We covered a stretch of just over 1 mile, concluding at the harbour mouth, and then all retired to the Harbour Inn for fish and chips on Adnams tab!

I got talking to lots of different people during the morning and was surprised that so many people had come so far to take part in the event.  I met a lovely couple who had travelled from Essex for the day, and a delightful lady from Norwich who was just getting over spinal surgery but was determined to help this worthy cause.  I worked with two local ladies, Nicola and Stephanie for most of the way, and had a really jolly time!

Now, Southwold has what I consider to be a very clean beach, and to my knowledge we didn’t find any buried treasure or anything spectacularly interesting rubbish-wise.  What we did find was lollypop sticks, cigarette ends, fishing line, and far too many tiny pieces of polystyrene, which if eaten by wildlife can be very harmful.

Whether you are local or staying here in one of our holiday cottages in Suffolk, I’d recommend taking part in a beach cleaning event or other voluntary task.  The atmosphere amongst the volunteers was very amicable and although our rubbish bags were not overflowing at the end we all enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction at the end for doing our bit for the environment.

You can find out more about Adnams beach cleans here.