Two wonderful organisations have teamed up to conduct a Big Clean at one of South Cumbria's most beloved beauty spots.

The Barrow branch of The Well Community teamed up with Emma McColm from LOVEmyBEACH to tidy up the shores at Biggar Bank, Walney.

The Well Community provides a safe abstinence based environment for people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, and their families, to come together for mutual support through social involvement. It was set up by David Higham, a recovering addict and ex-offender who found God during his time in prison and decided to dedicate the rest of his life to helping other people in a similar situation to his own.

LOVEmyBEACH is a scheme that is working on improving the water quality at Morecambe Bay and Cumbria’s 16 beaches. Emma McColm, who co-ordinates the project with the Morecambe Bay Partnership, said: "It is always fantastic to have new groups involved with cleaning up the beaches. This is the first time we have worked with The Well Community and we hope that we can collaborate again in the future.

"Biggar Bank is actually one of the three designated bathing areas on Walney and so the water should be clean enough to swim in. We hope that this litter pick and future ones to come will encourage people to stop their dogs from pooing on the beach, stop dropping litter and stop feeding the seagulls. When seagulls are fed on the beach they poo there too and it gets very messy"

Ged Pickersgill, 45, is a volunteer at The Well Community after graduating from their 12-step programme himself. He said: "We are all about community involvement at The Well. We are all people who have struggled with substance abuse and we have often stolen or taken from our communities. During our recovery we want to give as much back as we possibly can to our communities, to help make amends.

"The Big Clean beach clean was a perfect opportunity for us to work for our community we have a very physically able team and we like to be as proactive as possible.

"Recently our teams have also done the wrought iron work outside St George's Church in Barrow, we've just restored some original Victorian windows for an elderly lady we know and decorated a flat for a lady's disabled daughter. We just want to help in whatever way we can."

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