Although we’ve been quiet on this blog in the last few months, we’ve been busy in the background working with Dumfries and Galloway College and New College Lanarkshire, setting up a new project, wandering about and wondering about waste. More about the projects with the Colleges soon. We’ve also expanded our range of free merch with some new 2026 calendars that feature strandline footwear from the Solway and Moray coasts.

The photos in these calendars were all taken on short stretches of coast. The Solway edition features photos taken during beach cleans at Mullock and Fauldbog Bays, organised by the D&G Ecowarriors, Devorgilia Rotary and the Solway Firth Partnership a couple of years ago. January to June are from Mullock, while July to December are from Fauldbog. The Moray edition features photos taken one day while walking alaong the coast from Lossiemouth to Kingston.

As I have noted before, I find shoes particularly poignant, and when they’re washed up on beaches there’s an additional emotional undertow. We have a few Waste Stories that were inspired by lost/littered footwear, but there’s a darker story waiting to be written about strandline shoes.

And we’re finding no shortage of these as we get properly started with our new project, Remnants and Revenants. I’ll post separately about this, but I’m delighted to have received funding from the Royal Society (made possible with the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust, again) for a collaboration with Prof Bhavani Narayanswamy at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Vicki Last, Nic Coombey and Morag Walker. This is going to allow for at least two more years of making up stuff about rubbish …