3rd Annual Meon Shore CITO

2012 brought very wet weather; 2013 glorious sunshine. This year was somewhere in between but the aim was the same as ever: a team of eager geocachers meet with members of the Fareham Society and take to the Meon Shore beach to clean it of as much litter as possible. If you haven't attended a "Cache In Trash Out" event yet, try to get to one because they're just as sociable as standard events but you're outdoors and doing what you enjoy plus you are probably making a considerable difference to the local habitats and general appearance of a patch of land. What's more, you may pass a cache or two as you find rubbish so another find under your belt is no bad thing! Don't forget you'll get a rare icon for attending!

CITO Meon Shore 2014 was a successful venture and dozens of black bags of rubbish were collected off the coastline, some dropped by beach users, others washed up from vessels out in the Solent. As ever, there were the usual bits of green string which I used to tie my bag up with, plus bottle tops, cans, bottles and usual litter, but then you find weird things like a washing up brush and a workman's helmet.

 

If you're going to attend a CITO or any other litter clean up operation, be sure to bring some additional supplies than what you might bring with you to a standard event (note book, pen and trackables!) For a CITO, you are going to be handling dirty and unwanted stuff. A good tough pair of gardening gloves will help with broken glass as well as anything you don't want your skin to come into contact with. If you find a needle, make sure it does not make skin contact with you and dispose of it safely in a hard container so it won't puncture anything like a bin bag and cause injury and potentially disease. I take my reacher with me to CITOs. I half use it to grab caches I can't physically reach and half use it handling litter during CITOs. Great tool - every cacher should have one! I got such a suspicious look from the mobility shop I bought it from though!

I spotted the tip of this one but needed a lot of help dislodging it from the beach!