Fistral Beach Clean volunteers battle four seasons in one day

Warm sunshine, a heavy downpour, then drizzle rolling back in: whoever was in charge of the weather for the latest Fistral Beach Clean could not settle on a forecast. Eighteen volunteers turned out at Newquay‘s famous surfing beach anyway, and by the time they packed up, five bags of litter had come off the dunes and the sand.

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

Sun, rain and everything between

Beach cleans do not wait for good weather, and this one had a bit of everything. Volunteers worked through spells of warmth and sunshine broken up by a proper downpour and a stretch of drizzle, moving between the dunes and the open beach as the sky changed its mind every few minutes. Eighteen people stuck it out for the full session.

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

The dunes told their own story

Most of what the group found had been left in the dunes rather than on the open sand. Cans, bottles, broken glass, takeaway containers and food packaging made up the bulk of it, the sort of litter that tends to get tucked out of sight in the marram grass rather than dropped in the open.

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

What the tideline left behind

The beach itself yielded a different mix. Alongside general litter, volunteers picked through cigarette butts, plastic pieces, polystyrene fragments and lengths of nylon rope, the small, easily missed stuff that a falling tide leaves scattered across the sand rather than piled in one place.

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

Small thanks, big difference

Fistral Beach Clean thanked Keep Britain Tidy and the Boardmasters Beach Bar for their support of the group. Five bags is a modest pile against the scale of one of Cornwall’s busiest beaches, but it is five bags that will not wash back out with the next tide.

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean

📷Credit: Fistral Beach Clean