Our Story

I was fortunate to grow up in Norway, a place so cool that even 40 years ago they had underfloor heating, automated recycling & bottle return schemes as standard! Perhaps more impressively, they even had (& still do) have a special word that recognises the importance of spending quality time outdoors, immersed in nature, ‘Friluftsliv’ which translates to Free, Air, Life. It has never left me.

On reflection, the foundations for Till the Coast is Clear were laid in Norway but it was 16 years or so ago during an amazing trip to Chilean Patagonia, working as a volunteer sea kayak guide with Raleigh International that really got me going.

We were paddling around the barely populated & stunning Chronos Archipelago, It was incredible; soaring snow capped peaks, endless azure blue fjords & driftwood lined horseshoe coves. Pristine wilderness!

Not really…

Unfortunately before setting up camp & getting a brew on each evening, there was the routine team task of clearing stacks of plastic pollution from the strand line so we could pitch our tents!

A byproduct of the burgeoning aquaculture industry in the area, the quantity & variety of plastic was astounding. Unfortunately I can’t find the original photos (pre digital days) but we used the discarded fish feed sacks & filled them with outboard motor oil containers, rubber gloves, welly boots, overalls, antibiotic syringes, single use drinks and food containers, buoys, netting ETC and made dramatic piles.

It was shocking to see & really took the shine off the privilege of being there. The photos were submitted by Raleigh International to the Chilean Government & apparently some people in suits jumped up and down for a while. Alas, from what I have seen & read since, like everywhere else, things have got much worse.

Ever since that trip, as a keen outdoors person it has aways got my goat that you can not go anywhere on the planet & get away from the evidence of our lack of respect for our surroundings & nature. 

As a co founder of Endurancelife, the adventure sport & trail running brand, we introduced an element of coast cleaning to the now hugely popular Coastal Trail Series. However It was a token effort on reflection & did noting to offset the amount of single use plastic we used at the time.

It was not until a family trip to the Pembrokeshire National Park in 2016 that something snapped & I decided that I needed to be involved in helping to sort out the appalling state of our coastlines full time.

The photo above is actually from that trip & I was simply dumbfounded that even in the UK’s only solely coastal National Park, you could not go for a run or a paddle without being brutally reminded of the global issue that is plastic pollution. It really hacked me off & took the shine off what should have been a cracking day out, in a beautiful part of the world.

So I got a boat, quit my 9-5 and started clearing up…