Saturday March 24th was a busy day, and also #PhotoAnHour.

My day started at 6am, I got up to feed the cats, and was just in time to see Andy off to work.

By 7am I was showered and dressed, feeling excited about the day ahead.


At 8am I was in the car ready to drive to Southwold, an hour away. Today was the Beach Clean organised by local brewery Adnams. This is the third time I've been, each time more people have volunteered. The first time we were a group of about 35, this time our numbers had increased to 100.


Just after 9am I arrived in Southwold, found a prime (free!) parking spot by the pier, and headed to the beach for my pre-clean wander. I park near the pier, wander up to the meeting point, and from there we continue to the sea wall. Then I make my way back again meaning I walk the length of the beach twice.


At 10am I was still enjoying the solitude of the beach, it was a nice day, a coat and gloves were needed but walking kept me warm. I paddled in the sea - in welly boots, I'm not brave enough to go in barefoot at this time of year! How do people go swimming in the sea on Boxing Day?


By 11am the Beach Clean was underway. We'd signed in, been briefed, had a group photo and were recording everything we picked up within the first 100m of beach. It'll come as no surprise that plastic made up the bulk of the rubbish. We always find few odd socks, quite a lot of wet wipes, and bits of rope and string too.


At noon we'd reached the sea wall and our bags were collected together, this photo shows only a fraction of the collection - the van is already full. In total we gathered 108 bags of rubbish. The beach always looks clean, but so much of what we picked up was small, half buried, or entangled with seaweed.


By 1pm I'd had a cheese and ham toasty and a mug of earl grey at a beach side cafe, and made my way to Harris & James for a salted caramel ice cream. If you're ever in Southwold you much seek out this shop, the staff are wonderful, the ice cream divine!


At 2pm it was time for me to make my way home, and to take one last photo of the pretty beach huts, this one being the prettiest of the pretties.


3pm. As I was passing B&Q on my way home I stopped to pick up some paint for our downstairs loo, and to pick up yet more green swatches for the bedroom. I've narrowed it down to two now, and there's hardly a shade between them so I think eeny meeny miny mo is the order of the day! It's between R260D and X128.

By 4pm I was at my desk. After 5 hours at the beach all I really wanted to do was lay on the sofa but a client had other ideas. Her website needed to launch on Monday (and it did), but she'd changed her mind about some of the design elements and I needed to get them changed and approved so that they could be implemented in time. Tea helped me through.

At 5pm I was waiting for client feedback and Tinker decided that she was due some attention. I can't tell you how much time I spend working around a cat. Sometimes she falls asleep on my arm so I have to work one handed.


6pm came all too soon, the day seemed to go by in a flash. But at least I was done, the design was signed off, the client happy, and I could make another cuppa and get my ass on the sofa at last. Tinker took this as her key to make sure I stayed where I was for the foreseeable and fell asleep on my chest.


And here is where I stopped taking photos. Andy came home at about 7pm, he made supper, and we watched The West Wing. Tinker didn't move far all evening, and Socks turned up at about 9pm, demanding his night time Dreamies.

It was my wish at the beginning of the year to avoid that Sunday night feeling of a weekend wasted. My goal was to have a plan in place for the coming weekend by each Friday evening, and this weekend was a busy one.

Thanks to Jane and Louisa for hosting, I really like looking back over these posts to see what my days consisted of.

How was your weekend?

I'll leave you with a few bonus pics from my day.







A happy by-product of the day was the opportunity to expand my seaglass collection. This is what I picked up, adding to my meagre collection of four tiny pieces.

I love Instagram, not only for the pretty pictures, and the Instagram Stories, that I've somehow become utterly addicted to, but also for the things I stumble across.

In this instance I'm referring to discovering a beach clean up not too far from me, hosted by a local company, Adnams.

I popped it in the diary and promptly forgot all about it until the morning of the clean up. It was a nice-ish day so I decided to hop in the car and go.

Sadly I was held up along the way by two separate packs of cyclists riding two, sometimes three, abreast, on narrow country roads with little opportunity to over take. I hate these people with a passion, but that's not what I'm here to talk about today.


Anyway, I was late and had missed the meet up time, and was pissed off about it, but with the sight of the waves, and the smell of the sea air, I spotted a stone that seemed to be grinning at me and I decided not to let it spoil my day. I would spend the day there regardless. I ambled along the beach, picking up litter as I went along, figuring that you don't have to attend a beach clean up to pick up litter.


Half way between the pier, where I'd started out, and the sea wall, I saw the clean up party, they were just about to start. So I nipped over and asked if I could join in. Of course they said yes, all hands on deck and all that. So after a group photo, we set off. Bin bag in hand, with clip board to record everything we picked up in the first 100m of beach. Of course I found very little in that first 100m, only really finding anything much the moment I handed in my clip board, but what the heck, it wasn't a competition.


I should probably mention that the beach was Southwold. I wouldn't have said that it was a litter strewn beach, I've always considered it to be very clean, but when you really start looking you see lots of little bits and pieces. Mostly plastic.

I found string, small bits of rope, the remnants of balloons, a toy truck, a sock, the back end of a rat (I didn't pick that up but left it for the tide), used shot gun cartridges, wet wipes, and the plastic sticks from cotton buds. All little bits that are easy to miss but will not decompose.


It was really enjoyable, and felt very satisfying. I walked along the shore line, also looking at pretty stones, enjoying the feeling of sand beneath my shoes. I found my first piece of sea glass, albeit very small. For the first time ever I saw dead fish on the beach, tiny little things - they looked a lot like whitebait to me. I've never seen fish on the beach before, and another lady commented on it too. I took a rather morbid series of photos, but I'll spare you those.


The weather was perfect, it was cloudy so the temperature was warm but not too hot, and there was a warm breeze. I did get sunburn on the back of my neck, despite having suncream in my bag. It just didn't seem like a burning kind of day.


Between us (25 people in total) we collected 21 bags of rubbish, and on our short walk to the Adnams pub once we'd finished, I couldn't stop looking for litter and wanting to pick it up. We were rewarded with a free pint (just a half for me as I was driving), I sat talking to a lovely family who have been getting involved for a while. The next one is in September to clean up after the busy summer season, and I'm told participants are rewarded with free fish n chips for that one.

Being on a beach, feeling great satisfaction by picking up litter, and then eating good local grub? I'm in. It's already in the diary, in pen.


I wandered back down the beach cooling my feet in the surf. I hadn't eaten since breakfast so stopped off at a cafe for an emergency ham and cheese toastie, and mug of sweet tea. It was most welcome, and not bad for £4.00.


I wandered down the high street, popping in and out of the charity shops (1 book, 1 skirt purchased), before heading back to the beach. On my way I passed a bakery and queued for a while for a sour cherry gelato. It was worth the wait.

A short walk and I was on the beach again. After a stroll and bit of a sit, I reluctantly decided it was time to head home.


I spotted this building near the car park and something alerted me to the fact that it might just serve tea, so, feeling a little parched, I went to investigate. With an Earl Grey I read the first few pages of my recently purchased book, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, and decided it was going to be a good read.


And then it really was time to make my way home. It had been a lovely day - spontaneous and something a bit out of the ordinary.