The (reluctant) curate's wife: clean beaches

I have not written many posts from the North Coast recently as I have been spending time at our home in the South. It's been a way of detaching and preparing for the next stage. The Curate and I are about to leave the North Coast to live near the moor and nearer my work. We have enjoyed the beautiful coastline and living right on the beach. Our dogs love their daily walks on the wide open sands and meeting all the other dogs.These are very sociable occasions as, during the week, the regulars brave all kinds of weather to exercise their dogs on the sands.

But how do I know it is the weekend or the holidays when I am up at the North Coast? It is the increased amount of doggy bags left at the entrance to the beach, in the car park or half buried in the sand dunes. I mean doggy bags full of doggy c***. These plastic bags are left for all other beach users to stumble upon. The Curate regularly picks up bags left at the beach entrances by owners who are not prepared to carry the bags to the dog bins provided.

Other ways of not being seen with a bag full of poo - is to throw the full plastic bag into the hedges around the footpaths. This is more noticeable in winter when bare trees are often decorated with a bag (which comes in a variety of colours) that has got caught on a branch.
The cheap bags are not biodegradable and so the trees can be festooned for weeks until the wind shreds the plastic and deposits the contents below. In summer they are more quickly concealed by the brambles and leaves. Spot the doggy bag in this picture .
The plastic is a risk to other wild life and very unsightly.

It is at the weekend and the holidays when things get really bad. Some people, visiting by car, don' t want to put these bags into their cars and the dog bins are a few hundred metres away on the roadside.Neither will they walk the extra distance. They leave the bags lying in the car park or tucked away somewhere. Some people do try to remember and I have seen cars driving away with little full plastic bags hanging from their tow bars or windscreen wipers.

Our beaches are for everyone. The wide open sands, which are washed clean by the tides and cleaned by our local tractor driver on a daily basis, are a wonderful natural playground. With limited access to recreational areas, it is fantastic to be allowed to exercise our dogs on the beach. On sunny days,I see children digging in the dry sand and sliding down the sand dunes. They are having a wonderful time. But I also see this ........