Don't be 'shellfish', keep our beaches clean

It was the day after the heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures crippled a large part of the Hampshire area and Southsea remain untouched. Even though it was a lovely sunny morning, the temperature definitely didn't reflect how it looked. The wind was freezing and certainly woke you up. Four intrepid Goodgymers headed down to the Coffee Cup at Southsea to meet up with the Southsea Beachwatch team and approx. 250 other volunteers to help with the 2nd beach clean of the year.

Jo arrived first on the scene after purchasing our local newspaper as we had made front page news (nothing bad I add) but a great article promoting Goodgym Portsmouth. If you didn't pick up a copy today here is the article online. Alex arrived next and it was a good job he was wearing his Goodgym t-shirt otherwise Jo wouldn't have seen him in the masses of the people attending. Katie soon followed after her volunteering role at the local Southsea Parkrun and was certainly wrapped up for the cold weather. Rachel was due to join us at the start but unfortunately had a fall during Parkrun so went home to patch herself up before joining us later on. I hope the scrapes and bruises aren't too bad in the morning.

Alex, Katie and Jo walked towards Eastney as we had been told that is where a lot of the rubbish was and in true Goodgym style we headed off in anticipation to find something different whilst also picking up the standard plastics, fishing lines and glass on the way. When we got to Eastney we spotted the more 'interesting' part of our litter pick and spotted a plastic doll on the other side of the fence. Not wanting to let that get away from us we took a diversion to the swimming pool and collected the doll along with several food wrappers and cans. We didn't manage to walk to the naturist part of the beach where we may have spotted more interesting things but even in this weather I doubt anyone would be there. Then again, you never know :-)

Once the doll, glass and other rubbish had been collected we started walking back towards the Coffee Cup where we met up with Rachel and handed in our pickers and rubbish bags. Our successful cleaning finished with a customary stop at the Coffee Cup to warm up and enjoy a hot drink.