Beaches: the best and the worst

THE worst beaches were: Porthpean near St Austell in Cornwall (52 items of rubbish per metre); Hoylake, Beach Road, on the top of the Wirral (27 per metre); Oxwich Bay in Swansea (23.64 items per metre); Jennycliff, near Plymouth, Devon (21.5 per metre) Stone Jetty, at Morecambe, in Lancashire (21.13 per metre) and East Sands, North Queensferry in Fife (20.2 per metre).

The best beach was at Sennen Cove, the nearest beach to Land's End in Cornwall, with 0.04 items of rubbish per metre. The second best beach was found at Sandways, Kingsand (0.08 per metre) which is on the other side of Plymouth from Jennycliff - the fourth worst beach. Third best was Waxham, north of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (0.08 items per metre), with Rhyl East in North Wales taking fourth place (0.10 per metre). Portmuck Harbour, at Larne, Co Antrim in Northern Ireland was the fifth cleanest beach in the survey, with 0.10 pieces of rubbish per metre.