Falmouth’s Castle Beach has a new toy library (mind the seaweed)

Forgot the bucket and spade? Castle Beach has you covered. A free beach toy library has appeared beside the Castle Beach Café, a painted cabinet on wheels stocked with buckets, spades, balls and bats for anyone to borrow. The deal is simple. Take what you need, build your castle, bring it back for the next family. Nothing bought, nothing binned.

It is run by Plastic Free Falmouth, the town’s Surfers Against Sewage community group, working with Falmouth Town Council. The aim is to cut the tide of cheap single-use plastic toys that get bought for one day at the seaside and abandoned by teatime, where they break apart and end up harming wildlife.

Borrow, play, return

A bright sign on the café wall lays the whole thing out in three steps. Borrow what you need, play, then return everything so others can enjoy it too. Around it sit three reminders: donate clean toys only, share toys to reduce plastic waste and protect wildlife, and please don’t leave toys on the beach, because they can harm the animals that live there.

A few gentle house rules

The volunteers behind it have added some requests, delivered with good humour. Things break, and that is fine, but broken toys should not go back in the shed. If something snaps, let the café know rather than leaving it for the next child to find.

Donations are welcome, used or new. Just, please, no crab lines. “It makes the shed very stinky,” the organisers say. And if the shed is already full, they ask people not to pile donations up outside it or dump them at the café. Better to take them to a charity shop or the reuse points at the recycling centre.

One more, for anyone bringing toys back. Give them a rinse and let them dry first. “Empty out the seaweed and sand,” the group asks. They are speaking from experience here. They once found a whole bucket of the stuff put back on the shelf.

Reduce plastic, protect the beach

The collection is still filling out, and the group would happily take more clean, usable beach toys to stock the shelves. The sign signs off with the line they want every visitor to leave with: reduce plastic, protect our beaches, leave only footprints.

For now the shed is doing nicely. Just, they would gently remind you, hold the crab lines.