122 logs

We live in a beautiful place, the most stunning beaches, although slightly dishevelled after the recent storms but our home is pretty special. Occasionally myself and my family take a walk down the valley and onto the beach, walk a bit, my son Jago plays in the sand dunes, practising his long jump and then we make our way to Little Beau Cafe for an coffee and a cake. Sennen is pretty special. Throw in some of the clearest water in the world and some pretty good, but often fickle waves, we respect and take care of the place we live in.
However, today we walked along the coastal path from the car park to our usual route up the hill and home and was pretty astounded at what we saw. We began walking up the path and saw a couple of fresh piles of dog poo. We started counting and this helped with Jagos numeracy as he's only six. Within what must only be 100 yards Jago had counted 122 dog poos. Impressed with his counting ability I congratulated him as a proud father.

What I was not proud of was the mess along this path, 122 piles of poo. I know dogs run off and are often out of sight of their owners, but please, please, please, if you are a dog walker and you either live in, or visit Sennen, make the effort to understand that others use these paths, understand that like humans, dogs are pretty regular and before you let your dogs off the lead make sure they have done their daily dump. If you are present when they relieve themselves then either bag it and take it home, (don't bag it and leave for your return trip as the bunker below the black hut is full of discarded dog poo bags) or as the woodland Trust explained to me recently at work, 'pick it and flick it' into deeper undergrowth or off the beaten track. Here the poo will biodegrade happily without offending anyone, apart from the footpath maintenance teams, but if its flicked far enough no one has to witness what a disgusting mess we saw today.

Here's an idea, do what some Army veterans told me the other day. Bag it up, put it in your pocket and use it as a hand warmer on a cold winters day. I can hear dog walkers now saying 'screw that'. Well in that case, if you must put it in the bin and if the bin is full, why not call the council and let them know, or is that not your responsibility either.

I will add, that if this was 122 piles of human poo on the footpath how would we as a village/council  react?