A blustery afternoon was spent clearing litter from the beach whilst the tide was out. And we were joined by People & Stories and City of Sanctuary and met some new friends with some lovely chats.

We made our way around the top of the beach until the seaweed and rocks became dangerously slippy and so headed back for some refreshment with plenty of full bags!

A CoS member decided that the cardigan they found was too waterlogged to be worn on a Saturday night on the town. And Val won the pick by spotting the obligatory pair of pants. Sadly it was an undergarment too far and they had to stay in their resting place. Tess was very happy with all the fuss she received, although slightly miffed that noone had treats, even after she'd been spoilt at Pets at Home earlier in the day!

This beach clean was organised by People and Stories in collaboration with us, Jetsam and City of Sanctuary. When it was booked the coronation hadn't been announced and we envisioned a sunny, shorts and t-shirts kind of day!!

Despite the weather, there were still plenty of us and we managed to fill 7 or 8 bags of rubbish in an hour. The most interesting find was a buggy, we also found a very broken umbrella and lots of little plastics and polystyrene. We had fun pulling bits of rope and fishing line out of the depths of the beach.

We had an interesting chat with some of the asylum seekers and learnt some new words in Farsi, Spanish and Italian!

A new location for us today at Port Solent to clean the shoreline with the team from City of Sanctuary. We split into groups and started progressing along the shoreline collecting small bits of rubbish and logging them on the Jetsam app. We split into groups with one person having the Jetsam app so plastic and litter could be logged and photographed. Brian paired up with Scott and he found half a gardening fork that had been discarded after it had broken. Jo logged the rubbish on the app whilst Jenny and Vicki dug into the seaweed to find it. The seaweed was so dense that we all sank into it but thankfully didn’t get stuck whilst we were picking. As well as the large amounts of plastic wrappers, polystyrene, fishing line and rope we also added cutlery, retractable Stanley knife and plastic components from boats. We headed back to Scott’s car with the rubbish whilst Brian kindly offered to discard a large bag of rubbish and the broken fork.

Despite the dull weather, we still turned out to clean the shore line along with the team from City of Sanctuary.

We didn't find too many big recyclables but there were quite a few smaller bits so still plenty to log on the Jetsam app.

Scott made the most of his wellies and pulled a flipper, a cone and something shaped like a toilet seat out of the mud!

We found pants, a sock and part of a sea shoe as well as a huge piece of rope.

We filled 3 bin bags in around 75 minutes, not bad at all. It's good to see that the area is looking cleaner than it used to. Great work everyone!

Welcome to Amy and Janet on their first official GoodGym good deed.

We met up with Scott from People & Stories and Anita from Action Asylum at the City of Sanctuary plus a group of her asylum seekers from all parts of the world including El Salvador, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. They were all very complimentary about the welcome they've had from the folk of Portsmouth which is always good to hear! We had fun working together, using the app and practicing each other's languages.

As it was low tide, we headed towards the entrance to the marshes and down into the seaweed. Some bits were more sinky than others.... We logged lots for Jetsam as there was sadly lots of plastic.

"Interesting" finds included a flannel, some bits of rope, a bag, a pen, lots of milk bottle lids. Plus the usual bottles, crisp packets etc. The big surprise was that we didn't find any items of clothing!

Thanks to Anita & Scott for the additional photos as I didn't take very many!

We checked that it was possible to understand what the researchers wanted us to do and we identified some types of plastic as part of the research.

We fed back our findings to the team at Jetsam.