beachclean

The ranger service collaborated with Toben Lewis of Baile Mòr Books for an event this week.

Participants gathered at Ardalanish beach for a clean-up and to search for items that could be recycled into book binding art. Our island coastlines collect a lot of rubbish that washes up from the sea, a sad reminder of how much plastic is thrown away.

Leaving the beach cleaner than we found it.

In the afternoon some of us had a go at making our own books under Toben’s expert tuition. We began to transform a pile of potential materials…

We drilled and cut and stitched, learned the correct way to fold paper and tried a Japanese binding technique. We even included some paper made from seaweed.

Here’s the finished result! Trash transformed!

We’re enjoying weeks of almost unbroken warm sunshine here, time to give you a snapshot of what we’re up to in south Mull and Iona…

Thanks very much to the cheery NTS Thistle Camp volunteers, what a good-natured bunch of hard-working folk. They are seen here checking out the results of all their efforts shifting boulders by giving the new stepping stones the ‘prancing test’!

Next a great group of students from George Watsons college in Edinburgh, on Mull for a John Muir Award week, who helped us out with a seaweed survey, Marine Conservation Society litter survey and beach clean up at Carsaig.

Iona and Bunessan primary schools teamed up for a visit to Tiroran Community Forest and Mull Eagle Watch, learning about our nesting sea eagles, measuring and identifying trees and minibeasts and having plenty of time to explore.

Not to be outdone, afterschool nature clubs at both schools have been collecting wool caught on fences and brambles, which was then washed and mordanted. They also collected a selection of plants to produce their own dyes, and have carded the dyed wool reading for felting into pictures. Can you guess some of the plants we used from the photos?