After an afternoon recording litter on Ullapool’s North East  Beach I am now sat in my van with my faithful companion Cal, previewing a  presentation of my years littoral journey  which I’m  projecting onto the rocking van walls – as gale force winds continue to blow onshore. The  driving rain and the crashing waves hitting the  Port A Bhaigh beach a few hundred metres away, are providing a dramatic additional sound track to the sequence of images I’m reviewing .

I hadn’t planned tonight’s  preview but it feels  serendipitous, as  the Port A Bhaigh  beach is where my story began in 2012 and where on a much calmer day in May this year I and many volunteers spent the afternoon filling over tens of  bags of rubbish. Thankfully the beach survey today in Ullapool recorded far less litter and our band of ten volunteers were glad only to be needing to fill 9 bags of litter  as the persistent south westerly showers hurled themselves at us throughout the afternoon.

This is the 2nd  Beachwatch survey we have carried out , the information we are collecting is going off to the Marine Conservation Society to add to the all important knowledge bank of what’s happening where .

Our hope is that next year Ullapool will be able to undertake the survey in the same week as the national & international Beach Watch event which takes place in  September. So please come along next autumn, even in the wild weather we all had a good afternoon and made new friends keen on looking after our environment. Many thanks to Tom , Debbie, Sara, Lesley, John, Ron, Rowen, Ellen   & Maria for coming along.

My presentation of  littoral event images  over the past year will be taking place on Monday night at Ullapool Museum  7.30pm. Everyone is welcome , your feedback will be much appreciated. Thanks to Black Reiver Consultancy for the loan of the pocket projector.