‘Dirty tourists’ mar Luskentyre beach

Organisers of regular daily clean-ups of rubbish and plastic from the iconic beach at Luskentyre on Harris in the Outer Hebrides, say they have had enough.

Yet another weekend saw human excrement scattered in the machair along with burnt fence posts, discarded disposable barbecues and stolen traffic cones.

Luskentyre is known for its famous long golden sands washed by white-topped Atlantic rollers.

Dan and Ann Parry administer the Luskentyre Beach page on Facebook where they document the piles of refuse collected on their daily dog walks, which originally started as a way of removing plastic waste and discarded bits of fishing gear that the Atlantic washed up.

In the last few months, the problem has not been confined to what the sea brings ashore.

‘We’re no longer going to be cleaning up the beach every day as we have had enough.

‘The dirty tourists can wallow in their own crap like the pigs they are,’ an angry Mr Parry commented on the page this week.

Asked by the Lochaber Times how bad the situation actually was, Mr Parry explained: ‘I really despair for the state of some factions of humanity. No respect for anyone.

‘We used to live in Glencoe, so fully appreciate the state of the honeypot sites over there up around Arisaig, Glencoe, Glen Etive, Glen Nevis etc.

Luskentyre beach on Harris where more rubbish is being left behind by visitors.

‘It’s not so much the ‘wild camping’ that annoys people, it’s the lack of respect for communities – leaving trash, stealing fence posts, parking and camping close to houses, blocking access, verbal abuse. The list goes on.

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to see access rights diminished – they generally work fine – but this year everyone seems to have lost any sense of what is right and wrong.

‘We always pick up plastic debris washed in on the tides, but the last two months it has been a cesspit of tourist waste and excrement.

‘The sad thing is that everyone on social media condemns the action of the idiots, but I still never see anyone else picking up rubbish when they see it.’