http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7373667.stm

There’s a report at the BBC today of the adverts that created most complaints in 2007. The winner by a fair margin was the Department Of Health’s anti-smoking advert which featured people being hooked in the mouth rather viciously, like a fish on a line, and then dragged along the ground (you can watch the advert at the above link). 774 people complained about them, saying that the adverts were “offensive, frightening and distressing”. The complaints were upheld on the basis that they “have the potential to frighten and distress youngsters”.

But isn’t that the point? Research has shown that shock tactics are the ones most likely to succeed, and if a few children get shocked by the adverts and as a result never become smokers then isn’t that a good thing?

This leads neatly into the subject of the UK turning into a “nanny state”. There are lots of examples of this, but smoking is perhaps the most visible one. Is it really any of the state’s damned business if people choose to smoke themselves to death? We make risk assessments all the time as we live. Driving a car is a risk, being in a major public building or mass transit system is a risk, even walking down the pavement carries the risk that a car will mow you down as a blade of grass is cut by a lawn-mower. Smoking is the same.

Smokers know the risks and they choose to carry on doing it and I support their tight to slowly poison themselves. The government makes money out of it anyway. The cost to the NHS from treating smokers is far less than the revenue the government makes from the “sin tax” on ciggies. But I do think that adverts specifically aimed at children to persuade them not to start smoking is probably a good thing.

I also think that employees deserve protecting from the smoke of others and for that reason I support the recent ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. Popping outside to appease your addiction doesn’t seem like too much of an inconvenience really. The argument the other way is that the staff don’t have to work in those places, but that isn’t entirely fair. Bar staff tend to be people who are only able to work at specific times of the day such as students and single-parents, and bar work is one of the few options available to them.

Cheers, Tom.

I took the above picture yesterday morning. It was somewhat of a surprise when I got it onto my PC to see myself in each of the bubbles. The picture gets bigger if you click on it.

I can’t help but wonder if the bubbles are as a result of detergent in the sea. Spume is natural, but those bubbles look a little too much like what you get from washing up liquid to me.

Cheers, Tom.

Have you ever tried to take photographs when it’s almost dark, with a very long exposure? They always end up looking blue, like the one above. There is a good scientific explanation for this. It’s because of “Rayleigh Scattering”. The atmosphere absorbs shorter wavelengths of light the most, and this then this gets radiated across the sky. Blue is the shortest wavelength that our eyes are highly sensitive to, so the sky ends up looking blue. Indigo and Violet light is also affected the same way, but our eyes are less sensitive to both of these than to blue, and the sun produces slightly less of both of these colours as well. Otherwise, the sky would look a rather nice deep bluey-violety sort of colour.

Rayleigh Scattering  is also why the sun looks yellow from earth: it looks white from out in space where there is no atmosphere. It even explains why the sun gets redder as it sets. The light is having to travel through more atmosphere, so there is greater absorption of green colours, just leaving the longer wavelength red to yellow colours to get through to our eyes.

When there is moisture or dust in the atmosphere, the absorption patterns vary and we get stunning multi-coloured sunsets with all sorts of  colours. We get these a lot here because of the moisture in the air caused by the sea. The above picture shows this.

“Where The Blue Of The Night” is a song, originally sung by Bing Crosby. This is a fair version of it by Russ Columbo, but the reason I am posting this clip is for the gorgeous old record player:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzD3KFe6BL8

Where the blue of the night
Meets the gold of the day
Someone waits for me

And the gold of her hair
Crowns the blue of her eyes
Like a halo, tenderly

If only I could see her
Oh how happy I would be

Where the blue of the night
Meets the gold of the day
Someone waits for me

Here is Bing doing it from a film, but there is 2 minutes of talking before he starts singing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl-gMqyJLQ

Cheers, Tom.

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL1777256220070717

“The divide between rich and poor in Britain has widened to its greatest gap for more than 40 years, a social policy research charity said”

It has happened because “average households” have become poorer: “The proportion of average households fell from around two-thirds of families in 1980 to just over half by 2000”. There are fewer extremely poor people now, but far more near the poverty line, with 27% of families in 2001 being “breadine poor”. The number of “asset-wealthy” households has gone up “dramatically” and stood at 23% of households in 2003.

The root of the problem, according to the report’s authors is “people on higher incomes being overpaid, rather than those on low incomes being underpaid”. And people don’t like it, as this survey from February 2008 shows:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jun/20/globalisation.ukeconomy

“75%, say the gap between high and low incomes is too wide in Britain”

And 54% of people think taxes don’t make society fairer. So what’s the answer? Increased pay for the lower paid is one possibility. Perhaps the minimum wage should be raised.

The major political parties in this country all seem to be debating taxation at the moment and I see that as a very good thing. I hope we get some sensible and radical suggestions, but I suspect we won’t.

Personally, I’d like to see VAT scrapped and income tax increased to compensate, and more of the tax burden being paid by the high and very high earners. Get rid of National Insurance too and put that on income tax. The tax rules should be so simple that they could be written on a single sheet of paper and be understood by a child. It’s harder to fiddle an incredibly simple system.

Cheers, Tom.

P.S: Only 36% of voters want tax cuts, but 67% think they pay too much tax. Perhaps we just like to moan!.

There are some very distinctive noises made by waves as they break and then retreat over shingle.

First comes the low, deep booming roar as the wave breaks and many tons of water come crashing and splashing down.

Then comes the crackling, rushing sound of the water racing inwards.

There is a moment’s lull, like the calm in the eye of the storm, before the water all races out again, with a curious loud rattling and sucking noise.

I think the picture above is quite aural. As I look at it, I feel as if I can actually hear the noises. Does it do that for you?

Cheers, Tom.

I’m sure we are all well aware that we shouldn’t stare into the sun. The risk of permanent vision damage is surprisingly high. It’s particularly bad if you are looking through a magnifying device such as a telescope or binoculars……or a camera.

My eyes are sensitive at the best of times, so on the beach when it’s sunny I always try and remember to wear sunglasses. If I don’t, my eyes are streaming in seconds. This makes it difficult when I’m trying to take a picture like the one above (click on it to make it bigger). I have to try and shield my eyes while at the same time holding the camera steady and then pressing the button. It generally takes a few goes to get the shot I want because of this. The picture above is close to what I was hoping for. The horizon isn’t quite flat, but it captures the sun reflecting off the sea as I hoped: almost all of the colour has gone to just leave a silvery white and black. Every setting was turned down about as low as it would go to make the picture possible at all. The sun is only just out of shot, directly above the left side of the image. There were no clouds at all and it was about 2PM yesterday when I took it.

There was once a scientist named Joseph Plateau who stared into the sun for too long. This text copied from wikipedia:

“Fascinated by the persistence of luminous impressions on the retina, he performed an experiment in which he gazed directly into the sun for 25 seconds. Consequently, he lost his eyesight later in his life”

I wonder how they know that it was this experiment caused his blindness? A smart chap, he invented the phenakistiscope, which was one of the first devices to give the illusion of moving images, and was an early precursor of cinema.

Cheers, Tom.

Even the seagulls, as the picture above shows.

The title of this blog comes from a great song by The Fun Loving Criminals.  It’s a song that I fell in love with the moment I heard it, over 10 years ago now. I love the basic message of the song and the slow, smooth feel of the music. I’ve made a video to accompany the song that consists of about 100 of my sunset photographs. The pictures morph smoothly into each other, more or less in time with the music. I hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs31mcEJ7Ds

Cheers, Tom.

Helen and I saw dolphins last night as we were eating dinner (just after I took the above picture). Clearly visible through the window, there were up to 10 of them that kept appearing above the water and arcing back into it again. After a few minutes, they were gone again. They are truly lovely creatures and it made us happy to see them.

Thankfully there are no tuna round the waters of Britain, otherwise life might be more difficult for our dolphins. In the Pacific Ocean, there are both, and this has been a problem for decades now. By 1980, the dolphin population was a ¼ of what it was in 1960. Tuna and dolphins like each others company, so if you find dolphins in the pacific, you find tuna. The fishing method is to chase the dolphins in speedboats and when they get tired, put nets round them, catching both the dolphins and the tuna you really want at the same time.

The picture on this page shows the nets:

http://www.maninnature.com/Fisheries/Tuna/tuna1a.html

About 20 years ago, public annoyance at the declining dolphin population caused a change in the nets so that the dolphins could escape, but this has not helped the dolphin population to recover. It has made no difference: there are still only ¼ of the dolphins there were in 1960. One probable explanation for this is given here:

"Dolphin Numbers Still Low Despite "Safe" Tuna Fishing, Experts Say"

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070326-dolphins_2.html

“… the leading hypothesis is that [females] lose their babies during those chases

Researchers report that they have seen lactating mothers in the nets but so far no babies, indicating that the youngsters are left behind during the chase. If they can't reunite with their mothers, they most likely die”

If this is correct, it’s terrible. Much canned tuna now carries “dolphin safe” labelling to comfort consumers, but if the above hypothesis proves to be the right one, then this is a very false comfort. It’s put very bluntly here:

http://www.highnorth.no/Library/Interaction/Tuna_Dolphin/do-an-tu.htm

“The Dolphin Safe Label: In cooperation with environmental organisations, the major tuna canneries in the USA have introduced and marketed the Tuna Safe Label . The irony of it is that this label only serves to inform that the tuna has not been caught by encircling techniques. Dolphin Safe does not mean that no dolphins were killed. Data from fisheries in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and the Bay of Biscay, where other techniques are used, suggest that the number of dolphins killed per ton of tuna may be from 7 to 17 times higher in other fisheries than in those of the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Dolphin Safe = Environmentally Unsound The techniques that are now used in the Eastern Tropical Pacific lead to a much higher discard of immature tuna and incidental catches like sharks, sea turtles and several species of fish than when the tuna and accompanying dolphins were encircled. What it boils down to is, what are we willing to sacrifice for a dolphin? asks Martin Hall of the IATTC”

If you are a regular tuna eater, this gives something to think about.

To end on a happier note, here is a lovely performance of Tim Buckley singing Dolphins, from The Old Grey Whistle Test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU-9EMSYu0

“Sometimes I think about Saturday's child
And all about the times when we were running wild

I've been out searching for the dolphins in the sea

Ah, but sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me
This old world will never change the way it's been
And all the ways of war won't change it back again

I've been out searchin' for the dolphin in the sea

Ah, but sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me
This old world will never change”

Cheers, Tom.

There’s not a cloud in the sky and it’s utterly windless. The seagulls are floating lazily on the calm bosom of the blue waters and nothing disturbs the peaceful quiet calm of the beach.

I just returned from a walk and didn’t see a single soul. We three had the golden sands and the shingle all to ourselves.

Cheers, Tom.

This joke comes from the film “Shaun of the Dead”. The first picture above disproves this, not that it needed doing. It’s quite a funny film, but I didn’t think it was as good as the television series Spaced that Simon Pegg did before it. I thought the follow-up film Hot Fuzz was dreadful. Everything that made Pegg’s previous work good was lost in it. Too many clever film references, not enough character, a silly plot and not really very funny.

I did think of titling this blog “Look before you leap”, but I think the above is better. The green ball is in both pictures (easier to see if you click on them to enlarge).

Cheers,. Tom.

If there are any fish, of course. There was a fishing competition on the beach here yesterday. A busload of people from Liverpool, some from Cardigan and some locals, all competing to see who could catch the greatest weight of fish. I went out about half way through their competition and no fish had been caught at all. None. Not one. Nada, zip, the big 0. The only thing they’d be catching was a cold.

I spoke to one of them and he told me it was because the wind was blowing from the land onto the sea, which is rather rare round here, and so the fish headed for deeper waters.

There is a lovely song called “The Fishing Blues” which I thought was by the old blues musician Sam Chatmon, but it turns out to originally be by Henry Thomas. It was revived a few years ago by Taj Mahal. This is Thomas’ original recording of it from 1927:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh19MUIp5d4&feature=related

I couldn’t find Sam Chatmon’s version of it, but here is another of his songs. I think he is about 80 years old in this lovely film of him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBk8t3C4yws

Chatmon modified the lyrics to suit himself and he made the song much more amusing, in my view:

“Before you go a-fishing, you stay out late
But here’s a little something I’m gonna state
‘Most any fish will bite if you’ve got good bait
So your wife’s going fishing too
And I bet she’s gonna catch a big one too!”

Lots of those old blues songs are full of that sort of mild sexual innuendo, and John Hurt’s song The Candyman is another great example.

Cheers, Tom.

“The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact”

Part of a speech by Harold McMillan to the South African parliament on 3rd February 1960. Unfortunately, the wind of change looks like it might be blowing across Southern Africa again soon. There are two things which signal problems on the way in Zimbabwe. Firstly, there is the recent election result which saw Robert Mugabe’s party lose its majority, and a partial recount is now happening:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7355871.stm

“The BBC's Will Ross said the independent electoral commission's decision to withhold the results and then recount the ballot papers has led to widespread suspicion of bias, especially as Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF complained about the initial count”

“President Robert Mugabe denounced the opposition on Friday in his first speech since the election, saying "thieves" were trying to steal the country”

Secondly, there is the shipment of arms from China to Zimbabwe:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7354428.stm

“The ship contains three million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and several thousand mortar rounds, according to South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper”

“Some fear Zimbabwe will use the arms to repress political opposition”

These two events are probably not linked - the shipment has probably been long planned -  but one can’t fail to connect them. I fear dark times are ahead for Zimbabwe.

Cheers, Tom.

But please don’t give it to our dogs! Helen and I have discovered through bitter experience that dead fish does terrible things to the digestive systems of our two dogs. It’s strange because I’ve seen both of them yum down the most thoroughly disgusting things imaginable with great enthusiasm and apparently suffer no ill effects, but rotting fish just doesn’t suit them at all.

But what I would like to know is why they don’t learn from their experiences. When Dan sniffed out the fish in the picture above he immediately tried to eat it and Shep fancied it too. It was just pure luck that I was close enough to drag them away before any of it was ingested. So I put their leads on and took them well away before letting them off again. Dogs aren’t very smart, are they!

I think it’s a type of dogfish in the picture.

Cheers, Tom.

Up until a few years ago, I used to be a pretty hardcore motorcyclist. A long journey in foul weather in the midst of winter was no problem at all. Freezing cold, rain, sleet, snow, no problem: just wrap up well, wear waterproofs and check your oil and petrol before you leave. Failure to make the necessary precautions results in unnecessary hardship. This is an important thing to learn.

Another useful lesson was that everyone has the capacity to do completely idiotic things at unexpected moments and that includes both me and you. I was once almost knocked off on a roundabout by a yuppie in a BMW yapping away into his mobile and drifting outwards into me, completely oblivious: he missed me by about a millimetre . I was only saved by an emergency stop and it was pure luck that there was no-one behind me. And for me, there was the time I tried to do a U-turn on the way up a very steep hill. And at the peak of the turn I tried to put my right foot down but of course there was no ground there: crunch, slide, scrape.

When conditions are good, take advantage. If it’s March and it’s been cold, grey and rainy for a month and then suddenly it’s warm, the sun is shining and the road is dry: go for a ride! Don’t hesitate, get your leathers on and just get out there.

I followed this latter lesson when taking the above picture (which gets bigger if you click on it). The sun was dipping redly into the sea and I was going to just nip onto the balcony to take a few snaps. But instead I leaped up, walked briskly across the road and up onto the sea wall and the result was a far better picture.

And this reminds me of the most important lesson: don’t forget the lessons you’ve learned!

Cheers, Tom.

Last night, Helen and I were watching a film in our living room, and there was an orangey glow in the sky from the sun behind a cloud. It wasn’t that vivid, but it was pretty. And then the sun suddenly dropped beneath the cloud to reveal the view you can see in the picture above (which gets bigger if you click on it).

It was a matter of seconds only: you couldn’t see it, then you could. Luckily my camera was to hand so I ran out onto the balcony and quickly took about 50 pictures of which the above was the best one. A couple of minutes later it was below the horizon. It happens so quickly, it really is astonishing.

One of these days, I shall take a sequence of pictures at exactly 1 minute intervals as the sun goes down and post them all in one blog to demonstrate this effect. Hopefully tomorrow, if the weather is still fine.

Cheers, Tom.

(tags: sea, sun, orange, sunset, photography)

Surfing is popular here in Borth. There are three major factors that determine the size of waves:

1. The distance of water the wind has blown over

2. The wind-speed

3. How long the wind has been blowing

The bigger each of these 3 things is, the bigger the waves.

It’s sometimes difficult to match the wave sizes with the wind and that is largely because the waves were formed by very distant winds and took a long time to travel here across the sea.

The picture above was taken a few days ago when there was no wind at all, but fairly large waves. Click on it, and it gets bigger.

Cheers, Tom

It feels like summer today, as you can see in the picture (click to make bigger). There’s a bit of wind but apart from that you could think it was summer, with warmth and mostly blue skies. It’s true T-shirt weather.

The title above comes from the oldest traditional round song known to exist. It dates back to 1260 and was used at the climax of the famous British film The Wicker Man. The old language looks quite unfamiliar to a modern person, so I’ll give the original text followed by a modern translation:

Svmer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calue cu.
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, wel singes þu, cuccu;
Ne swik þu nauer nu.
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!

Summer has come in,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb,
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the buck-goat turns,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo;
Don't you ever stop now,
Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

Cheers, Tom.

About 6 months ago, Helen and I decided we weren’t going to watch the television any more. We watched almost nothing anyway, so a complete stop wasn’t difficult. It means we shouldn’t have to pay the TV licence too, which should save money (I’ll write a whole blog on the licence fee some time soon so I won‘t go into that now).

I didn’t like the fact that there was always someone giving their opinion on something, and those opinions instantly gain weight simply because they are on the television. Thus, the opinions of the viewers are, to at least some extent, shaped by their tellies.

I hardly liked any of the programmes. The films tended to be ones I either didn’t want to watch or that I already owned on dvd anyway, the comedies were mostly either repeats or not very good, the dramas uninteresting, the soaps dreadful, the news I can get elsewhere, and that just leaves the occasional documentary that I can probably find on you tube anyway.

It’s a time stealer. I used to work with someone who when asked what he did last night would say “I watched television for a few hours and then went to bed”. What!!! He meant that he just kept clicking round the channels until something caught his attention and then when it lost his attention again he’d start clicking again.

Entertaining yourself seems to be a dying art. The playing of musical instruments is declining, reading is going down, even newspaper sales are dropping like a stone. But something interesting is starting to happen: television viewing numbers are starting to drop. There are dozens of reports online about this, all saying these sorts of things:

“The absence of television viewers has network executives scratching their heads”
“hit shows … are losing significant numbers of viewers from previous years”
“12% fewer men are watching television this year than last year”
“BBC viewing figures down by 5.3% overall”
“ITV ratings slid across the board, dropping by 8.3%”
Etc. etc.

Factors are thought to include increased playing of video games, more dvds being watched, and higher use of the internet. This is a very worrying time for television management. These lyrics of David Byrne’s (from the song Television Man) have never seemed more appropriate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jPyjyNF-TU

“I’m looking and I’m dreaming for the first time
I’m inside and I’m outside at the same time
The world crashes in into my living room
Television made me what I am”

There are lots of beautiful things to look at outside, if you are able to get out. Above is what I think is one of them. It’s a picture I took a while ago of one bit of the petrified forest here. The picture gets bigger if you click on it.

Cheers, Tom.

Yeah, it’s a bird actually (picture gets bigger if you click on it). But North Wales appears to be a hotbed of activity for UFO sightings. There are many accounts on this page, but here is just one recent one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/guides/weird/ufos/pages/onenight.shtml#williams

“We spotted an unusual object in the sky as we drove through Gorslas at about 6.40pm on January 1st 2008. It was dull orange in colour and was bobbing up and down above a playing field - it wasn't much higher than the roof-tops! We opened the window to see if we could hear something but there was no noise to it. As we drove closer towards it, it started travelling at quite a speed towards Carmarthen. “

As if that isn’t enough, there is the “Welsh Society of Ufologists” and there are tons of tales here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/guides/weird/ufos/pages/margaretfry.shtml

So do you believe that UFOs could be aliens from somewhere else in the universe, or do they all have more commonplace explanations?

Cheers, Tom.

Helen and I are always joking when we open the curtains in the morning that the sea is still there: “Hey Helen, look at this - the sea’s still there!”. I know, those long winter nights are just going to fly past. But this morning when I opened the living-room curtains and looked out, I couldn’t see a thing. Thick mist meant that I could only just see the sea.

So, I went down onto the beach and tried to take some pictures but they were mostly rubbish. The only one that even turned out vaguely acceptably was the one above (which gets larger if you click on it) which was the last one I took before I came home. The mist had risen by 30 or 40 feet and formed a thick blanket above my head. You can see Borth village ahead and nothing at all above the height of the houses. Before that, it was down at just above sea level.

I was reminded of this traditional song played here by Steeleye Span:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heCWKiII29A

“One misty moisty morning when cloudy was the weather
I met with an old man a-clothed all in leather
He was clothed all in leather with a cap beneath his chin
Singing how do you do and how do you do and how do you do again”

Cheers, Tom.

There is something pleasing about eating dinner at the table. It feels sociable. But this week, Helen is in Scotland on holiday, so I have mostly not bothered and eaten from a plate on my knees whilst watching a film (Scarface with Al Pacino most recently). As I was doing so last night, I was immensely distracted from the film by the view I had through the window. The sun and clouds were shifting surprisingly rapidly and producing the most lovely changing patterns in the sky.

Luckily I had my camera to hand, so I took the above picture from the sofa, through the window,  without having to interrupt my degustation. It’s too dark a picture as a result of being taken of the outside from the inside, but I hope it gives the feel of what I was seeing.. It gets bigger if you click on it.

Cheers, Tom.

We often get stunning sunsets here on the West Coast, with an orangey-red sun dipping down into the sea. For the last few weeks it has been different. About an hour before sunset, the sky will be completely clear and then a cloud will appear and grow and grow, and then the sun will disappear behind it just at the perfect time for photography. It feels like a conspiracy.

That’s what happened last night. I was all set to take what looked like they could have been nice pictures but clouds got in my way. As Joni Mitchell put it:

“But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all “

Here is a lovely live recording of it from 1970:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg

The above picture shows the effect I’m referring to, combined with a bit of self portrait. What you can see is the reflection from the doors onto our balcony. The picture gets bigger if you click on it.

Cheers, Tom.

To save space, I always reduce the size of the pictures on here, but I normally set them up so that if you click on them they get bigger. The above one does that as well, but even on that larger size you can still only just read the message on the board. On the original un-shrunk picture it is quite clear. The sign says (in both Welsh and English):

“No dogs on the beach 1 May to 30 September”

This is the peak holiday season and the council have decided that at these times dogs shouldn’t be allowed, presumably because of their potential for making mess. This seems a little strange because the most mess is left by humans and they are still allowed, and because most dog owners are responsible about picking up their doggy’s doodoo.

Luckily, if we walk about 400 metres to the right, the main holiday beach ends and we are a