Criccieth residents got together to clean up ‘heartbreaking’ litter on the beach.

Richard Fowler, Debbie Jetson and members of the swimming group the Woolly Hatters met to collect as much litter off the beach as they could carry.

Mr Fowler said: “When you go down there it’s heartbreaking to see how much rubbish has washed up. The stretch of beach between Criccieth and Black Rock is pretty long, and so much rubbish washes up that you would feel helpless attempting it on your own. There’s so much there that you’d think ‘I couldn’t possibly carry one percent of all of this.

“This led to the idea of us thinking we could band together, because more hands make light work, and we could actually do something about it.

“I’ve been speaking about it before with my friend Debbie Jetson who is the go-to person for the Woolly Hatters. But we just kept talking about it rather than do anything, but she called me a couple of weeks ago and said ‘let’s go do it’.

“We told a few friends and thought we’d see who turns up, and about 20 people came. We cleaned a big portion of the beach, but there’s a lot of it still to do.

“We do want to do it again, but we’re not sure how regularly we’ll be able to do it. It’s not an organised thing, it’s very much coming from the standpoint of ‘I’m going to pick some litter up off the beach, come along if you fancy’.”