Some of the strangest finds of the Caithness Beach Cleaners
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Over the two years of its existence members of Caithness Beach Cleaners (CBC) have found some weird and wonderful objects around our coastline – a selection of which is presented here.
From prosthetic limb covers and Russian meds to Victorian sauce bottles, fluorescent tubes, holy water bottles, training dummies, working cameras and crumbling drones – the beach cleaners have been removing much more than plastic from our coastline.
We reported on the find of a small cross at Murkle beach by Thurso man Mike Ross a few weeks ago and this was not the only discovery of ancient artefacts in the area. Dorcas Sinclair and her husband Allan came across a cache of Victorian era sauce bottles just along the coast at Castletown just over a year ago.
"Allan and I discovered about 50 of them. It looked like they'd been packed in a crate," she said. The 150-year-old sauce bottles were removed from the beach – many were broken and the glass would have been particularly dangerous for bathers and dogs.
Dorcas, from Weydale, started the Facebook group Caithness Beach Cleans in March 2019 and membership currently sits at 833 volunteers who have picked up over 25.5 metric tonnes from the county's coastline.
Alison Jones is another CBC member who has come across an array of unusual items on her travels round the far north coastline.
"We have found literally hundreds of pieces of hand-made leather shoes at Sandside. I used to collect them until I realised I was going to end up with bags of bits of old leather.
"Unless they're unusual like the tiny one, I usually just leave them on the beach since they are organic."
Strangely, a collection of unbroken fluorescent tubes drifted into Dunnet beach recently and prosthetic limb covers have been turning up around the coast near John O'Groats.
Wick High School teacher, Chris Aitken, who found and photographed some of these medical oddities believes they may have come from shipping containers that fell into the Pentland Firth a few months ago.
The containers were lost from a ship in late October 2020 after gales swept the north of Scotland. The incident involved 10 empty 40ft containers and two of them were reported ashore in south Hoy, Orkney.
Caithness Beach Cleaners welcomes new members to its group which can be found on Facebook. Many active members post photographs of their finds and the amount it all weighs to add to the overall tally of the group.
Dorcas said: "We are supported locally by various businesses including Mackay’s Hotel in Wick who provided us with hi-vis waistcoats, Caithness Creels gave us gloves and Caithness Livestock Breeders who supplied us with litter pickers and gloves.
"We are also doing verges and so far have removed 378.6lbs from them. We have an Easter Challenge for the beach clean kids too."
Happy birthday Caithness Beach Cleans
