- At 2.30pm on Friday the 7th of July, a small team of dedicated beach cleaners started their challenge of completing a 24 hour beach clean.
- We were doing this firstly to clear a beach that was heavily polluted by plastic and secondly to help raise money to buy a landing craft boat to help up access and clean even more beaches.
- After driving up in the rain, it cleared as we approached the beach. Thankfully the weather was great for the full 24 hours.
- The location was a beach in the south of Skye, a beach that Scottish Coastal Clean Up had previously visited in April for three days, clearing away 2 large boats load of rubbish.
- We arrived at the beach to find a herd of cattle standing on all the washed in rubbish, many were chewing on rope and plastic.
- The beach was covered in years worth of tangled fishing rope and nets, it was up to 1 metre deep in places.
- 4 people beach cleaned for the full 24 hours.
- We had 3 extra volunteers visit us for a couple of hours each.
- Sunset was at 10.20pm and Sunrise was at 4.40am
- We only need to used head torches for about 3 hours due to the long daylight hours in Skye at that time of the year.
- We celebrated our halfway mark at 2.30 am with mochas and chocolate!
- The temperature never dropped below 15 degrees.
- At about 6am, the tunes came on, along with some enthusiastic singing and dancing.
- About 18 hours in, we took a swim to refresh ourselves…perhaps due to tidiness, we also thought we were mermaids!
- Unfortunately we didn’t find any treasures, just plenty of items that definitely do not belong in the sea.
- Despite taking a camp stove for hot meals, we all ended up just snacking and cooked nothing at all.
- We were mostly fueled by Muesli bars, sweeties, fruit, chocolate and nuts, water…and Brose oat milk!
- We were prepared for midges, but aside from a couple of hours in the middle of the night, we were lucky enough to have a light breeze to prevent them.
- Aside from the cattle, we also spotted a seal, frogs, numerous seabirds and an Eagle.
- At least 90 % of what we picked up was old fishing rope and net.
- A large amount of what we removed had to be cut away or detangled.
- We bagged up and removed over 4 tonnes of rubbish from the beach during our 24 hour beach clean.
- One of our team members was already planning the next ‘extreme beach cleaning’ challenge on the way home!
- We raised £4000 towards our boat. This is an awesome amount, but we still need more. You can donate to our Crowdfunder at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/sccu
Check out our upcoming events page to get involved in future cleans (we promise they won’t be 24 hours!).