The only thing that matters right now..... on the biobead spill at Camber Sands

 

So much has happened, but only one thing matters...

18/11/2025

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My initials on the wall at the fish and fruit market, Funchal

So much has happened in the last few weeks. 

So much, that at times I felt completely overwhelmed and felt that I had taken on too much. Amongst other things I was coping with.....

• Redecorating at home; paint colours to choose. Thousands of match pots and bits of painted coloured paper around the house. OK, not thousands, but more than I care to admit to....
• a solo show  to be hung in a beautiful community cafe in Hextable.
• a health issue that has taken some time to come to terms with.

To distract myself from all of the above I booked a November trip to Madeira for a walking week in a group of 'like minded' individuals. Walking is the activity that calms me above all others.

Little did I know that the group would be just me and two other people; another group of friends having cancelled at the last minute due to a leg injury.
Little did I also know that one of the other two was afraid of heights and edges, and the other had a fear of walking down hill. 

Sunny street, Funchal. Madeira.

So we muddled through, on levadas (ancient water irrigation channels), cliff tops and mountain paths, each hike being a challenge for one or other of my two companions, until the poor local guide almost lost the will to live trying to keep everyone happy.

I was just grateful to be walking, in shorts and t-shirt, and away from the worries of domesticity. I changed my walking pace from pretty speedy to VERY SLOW, and all was well. I also ate a lot of cakes. Pastel de nata and Queijada da Madeira to be precise. Delicious.

Unfortunately, while I was away a disaster was unfolding back at home in Camber Sands.

Tiled street, Funchal

A disaster that beats all other environmental disaters on the local coast hands down; the release of millions of plastic biobeads into the sea from Southerm Water's Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works.

A big enough problem to reach the national news. A beautiful sandy beach covered with millions of black plastic beads. An environmental disaster on a grand scale. 

I felt distressed not to be able to turn up with the other many local people to help try and clear the beach of the beads. I have done beach surveys counting these biobeads in the past with Strandliners, and know how devastated their leaders will be. 

I followed the news each day, only to learn that Southern Water had been found culpable. I wanted to be there. 

Southern Water staff sieving the sand some days after the spillage.

I finally made it to the beach on Sunday; nearly two weeks after the spill. Many sacksful of pellets had already been removed from the beach by volunteers. 

Staff from Southern Water were sieving the sand in a slow and laborious way. It was a depressing sight. 

I made a video of the process for Instagram. 

watch the process of collecting biobeads on the beach here

The video shows the sieving of sand, and the collection of biobeads so much better than any still photo can. But because I know not everyone can access the video, here are some photos anyway.

a wheelbarrow full of biobeads at camber Sands

The early clean up operation undertaken by Strandliners and  @nurdlecoasts is now on hold until the next spring tide. This is a particularly high tide around the time of a full moon, which will carry the beads further up onto the beach, and hopefully allow another collection of washed up beads using a microplastic vacuum which can only work on soft sand.

biobead debris from the clean up at Camber Sands

The whole event makes me very sad. 

A feeling of 'solastagia'.

Solastalgia is the distress caused by negative environmental changes to a person's home environment. It is being felt by so many local people.

I created the book 'Shore' last year about man's behaviour in relation to the sea shore. A book created in frustration at the way we treat our beautiful coastline.
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On one of the pages I wrote;

'What if it rained so hard that the water
companies opened their flood gates and poured
millions of plastic beads and gallons of sewage
onto the brightly decorated shore, as we danced
like fools in the surf.'

Image from the book 'Shore', showing biobeads and microplastics

It shouldn't have happened. 

There are no words.

On beauty and overcooked vegetables

 

On beauty, and overcooked vegetables

4/7/2025

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A very good friend asked me what my next blog post would be about. We chatted about writing and I explained that I have recently been having difficulty working out what is OK to say in my blog. Before I gave up alcohol completely I found that a glass of wine helped me to find the perfect balance between saying too much and holding back on what I really feel. Now I am mostly  just holding back...... but let's see how this goes.....

This week OH and I celebrated 43 years of marriage. I explained to very good friend that 'celebrate' was probably not the right term to use. For we have never felt the need for romantic dinners, anniversary gifts or sentimental acts. We barely manage an exchange of cards. Each year it is a test of memory. Who will forget this time. In the past we have had all possible combinations of forgetting. Both, just me, or just OH ( my other half). The rememberer always gets to feel good. Phew! I made it this time.......

This year we both failed in different ways. OH took himself off to find the Mediterranean Sea for a few days, for a 'proper summer break'. No matter that we have a heatwave here in England. This was his way of dealing with the fact that he has agreed to go to Norway for our summer holiday. No weather guarantees there. I don't enjoy humidity or heat. OH thrives on sweating in the sun whilst climbing an ancient ruin. I just want to jump into a fridge. So he left an anniversary card for me at home, forgetting that I, also, wasn't at home. I had escaped the heat of suburbia for the cooler climes of Camber Sands. 
I remembered that the anniversary was looming too late to put a card into his suitcase, and had to make do with a vastly inferior e-card. Almost as bad as no card. Perhaps worse... it certainly felt desperate.

So we spoke on the day. He from a castle in Corfu, sweating in the Mediterranean sun, and me from the sunshine of Camber Sands, fresh and glorious. We laughed at our joint ineptitude, and all was good.

Which brings me to the cabbage ( and mange tout peas). How is it that after 43 years OH still cannot cook either in a way that allows one to enjoy their freshly picked, home grown delicious flavours? How can it be so hard not to boil them to a soggy mess, and serve them dripping with water, onto clean white plates? There. I said it. No going back.... and yet we have 43 years. Some things are just not worth worrying about. 

I have pondered long and hard about whether it is OK to blog about this, and realise that fear of getting it wrong was stopping me from writing at all. All this indirect communication through blogs is turning into a family specialty. Son does a wonderful job of communicating all sorts of things with us via the written word. And surely it is OK for me to reciprocate. So much that needs saying gets said, and our lives are so much richer for it. Maybe not the cabbage bit, but we all get to understand each other a little better, and that is the strength of words on a page.

And in the middle of writing this OH and I popped off to Norway where it was unvbelievably hot and sunny every day for 8 days. 27 degrees and barely a cloud to be seen. No moody landscapes on this trip.

It was so hot, and so beautiful that I barely took any photos, and my camera stayed in my suitcase for the whole trip. I fell in love with Norway, and knew that I couldn't do it justice in such a short space of time whilst on the road. I will have to return at a gentler pace.

So I soaked in the beauty, swam in the beauty, and hiked in the beauty. And that was more than enough. 

Morning sun, near Oslo airport.

Working with the landscape in Santa Fe

 

Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico

 
Santa Fe,  New Mexico, in the United States of America.

A trip that I had been looking forward to for many months; to Santa Fe Workshops, a photography centre with high calibre tutoring. The home of Georgia O'Keefe.

Part of me felt ambivalent about travelling to the US given recent worldwide events, but the other part of me really wanted to go; I was excited by the course aims and the work of its tutor Anna Rotty. The course was entitled 'Landscape as Collaborator'. 

A bit of a pretentious title perhaps? Not, it became clear, for those who truly respect the land and also the people who have inhabited it for hundreds of years before white settlers arrived. I had a lot to learn. 

So what is a collaboration? I was happiest with a definition that involved participants working together to achieve something greater that that which any individual participant could achieve if working alone. Without the effect that the landscape has on my psyche my photography would not exist.

I didn't want to get too heavy and philosophical about the title, being more interested to experiment with new techniques. Often my 'why' of making images comes much later. It  becomes clearer with time whether a deeper meaning is emerging. I am happy to let weeks pass and see what transpires. I was there to have fun.  And I did.

Typical adobe ( mud and brick) architecture of Santa Fe.

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Our group arrived with a few images from home already printed out, but quickly started making new images in the bright, almost desert, high altitude landscape.

It was refreshing to trek out into the garden with minimal equipment and to start photographing just a few yards from the centre. I have long given up photo workshops where you travel many miles in a bus to a chosen location, all jump out of the bus, line up your tripods and take the 'classic shot'. Not for me. Especially not waterfalls in Iceland or red boats sailing in front of icebergs in Greenland! I prefer the closer details and the colours of the terrain. I don't like having my photographic subject matter chosen for me.

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Photographing through a home made viewfinder.

We started off making viewfinders for looking at the landscape. This rapidly moved to taking pictures through the viewfinder. Fragments of sky, bush, tree, soil. Isolating objects. I have done something similar before with litter, but enjoyed the blue sky and the cotton wood trees.

We printed images in the digital lab and went outside again to try new juxtapositions. Finding shadows and creating shadows became a happy game.

a photograph used as a viewfinder.

self portrait with daisy

It was Anna Rotty's waterfall of light on water 'Paradise Waterfall'  that drew me in to applying for this course.

I  was excited at the idea of creating sculptures with photographs, and the idea that I don't have to frame my work in order to display it. This is good for both my pocket and the environment, and fits with my recent sculptural book making experiments, 

Paradise Waterfall | Anna Rotty

We found a beautiful sun lit stream to work with.

​A happy place......

​The bright sunlight created wonderful ripples on the water. 

Sunlight and fallen leaves

At work in the early morning

As the days progressed I became more interested in repeated rephotographing of images in different locations. Lush vegetation on dry soil. Water on parched soil. I started thinking about location, transportation and the presence or absence of water. 

The rain drenched lupins below are rephotographed in Abiquiu, Santa Fe and Vancouver. A record of my recent trip and also a previous trip to Alaska where the lupins resided. 

Abiquiu, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

back to the lush rain forest of North vancouver

I worked with shadows and my own body. Placing myself into the landscape without showing my face. Immersing photos in the stream and watching them gain strength as they dried. 

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'I am where I am' - Santa Fe

river washed photograph

As a stranger in Santa Fe I didn't have an obvious way to connect with the landscape., except as a stranger.  But by demonstrating my presence there I began to feel connected in the way that I usually do when walking and exploring natural spaces. 

I don't really know yet what I am trying to say other than;

'I am in this place. I give you the the evidence. This is landscape.'

See; I can be really pretentious if I try.......

Also emerging are themes  about changes with passing time, travel/transportation and  different climates.

Now that I am back home on the beach at Camber Sands I will continue exploring possibilities and playing with ideas until I really know what I wish to say.

I have all summer to think about it. 

​Thank you Anna!

Santa Fe cloud at Camber Sands

Immersion | Caroline Fraser