HELPING TO CLEAN UP OUR COAST AND COUNTRYSIDE
Although I've been quiet on here lately, I've not stopped my litter picks and beach cleans, finding more vintage litter which you see in a couple of photos above. One is a St. Michael Strawberry Yogurt pot priced at 6p from around 1980 which was washed up on Blue Anchor beach one morning last week. The other one is more unusual. In 1976, Horlicks Dairies which had depots across Somerset, decided it would be a good idea to change from glass bottles of milk to plastic sachets. This would allow shops to be able to store all of the milk in the fridge rather than keeping what bottles didn't fit in, out in the warmth of the hot summer. The sachet fitted into a plastic jug and then you would cut the corner off and pour. I was working at the shop on Dunster Beach at the time people found it difficult to cope with and if they didn't have the jug, the milk went everywhere! However, I recall one morning when we received our delivery of around 300 pints and stacked it in the fridge. About an hour later, there seemed to be a leak somewhere before customers began coming in saying they had lost their milk in the fridge. By lunchtime, there was milk pouring out of the shop fridge as all the bags gradually came apart due a a fault on the seal meaning thousands upon thousands of pints of milk across Somerset went to waste. I'm pleased to say that it wasn't long before Horlicks Dairies returned to the returnable glass bottle saving what could have been millions of plastic milk bags around in our environment. Anyway, I found this milk bag last week, again washed in on the tide, on the beach between Dunster Beach and Minehead. As you can see, the bag has not broken down in the sea at all in 46 years!
As the header says, it's not all about litter. One morning last week, when the weather was breaking new records with temperatures above 40c in some parts of the country, I was doing a beach clean before it was too hot. I started at Blue Anchor and followed the tide line, past Dunster Beach and planning going as far as Minehead. However, halfway along the coast of the golf course, I spotted a Common Gull on the pebbles. It's unusual to see this so I went towards it which panicked it as it tried to fly off but it just stumbled on the pebbles. I calmed it down and eventually it let me pick it up. I walked back to Dunster Beach with it and called in to see the site manager Steve who gave me a box to put the gull in and take to the vet. I gave it some water which it drunk plenty of and carried it back to my car at Blue Anchor. It went off to the vet but sadly, it didn't survive as it had a broken leg but mainly because it was so dehydrated having been stranded on the pebbles, probably for at least 8 hours since the last high tide. At least it wasn't left in the hot sun to die or perhaps attacked by other birds or a dog. The other photo shows two numbered rings from the remains of a dead racing pigeon I found washed up on the shore near Blue Anchor last week. I removed the rings and when I got home, I logged the details and got the owner's mobile phone number so sent him the sad news on a text. I had a lovely message back thanking me for letting him know what had happened. The pigeon had been released in St. Malo, France last year so the owner was pleased I had let him know what had happened to it. I am out doing a beach clean in West Somerset most mornings and with the summer weather with us and more people around, I often get people stopping to come and talk saying how grateful they are to me for making a difference which makes it even more worthwhile!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorBorn in West Somerset, I have always been proud of where I live and want everyone else to enjoy it too! Archives
September 2022
Categories |