Christine's walking & birds blog

As I walked back to my car I was aware of two men standing at the bottom of the grassy bank talking. I didn't take much notice until I got closer, when I realised they had two large shopping bags standing at their feet. As I unlocked the car they picked these up, holding the bottoms, and brought them up to the lay-by where they heaved them into a 4x4. I've no doubt the bags were full of stones.

I really don't think I can go to Ardmair any more; I get so upset about this. I try not to see what people are doing, but these men were right in front of me. The greed and acquisitiveness of stone stealers makes me sick - and they're not all tourists. What got me started on this was being on a geology walk a few years ago, when one of the group asked about the stones on Ardmair beach. The young, Scottish, female leader of the group, who had to my mind made a couple of snide comments about the English (I was the only English person there), airily replied that tons of stones from Ardmair disappeared down the M6 every year.  Well, one of the people I've approached since then turned out to be not just Scottish, but also a local, so that was rubbish. But many of the stone stealers are tourists - and they don't just take one or two!

Ringed plovers breed on the beach most years, and these beautiful smooth stones provide excellent camouflage for them, their eggs, and their chicks. It's a pity the information board by the lay-by doesn't include information like this for tourists who pull in there, along with or instead of the stuff on whales and dolphins, which the vast majority of them are highly unlikely to see anyway.