Two men have completed a 500 mile round litter-picking trip from Dover to Dundee.
Frédéric (Fred) Munsch, from France, and Edmund (Eddie) Platt, from Leeds, set off on the journey two months ago with hopes of collecting rubbish and raising awareness about plastic pollution.
The pair completed the last leg of their journey in Dundee on Monday after almost a week of picking up litter across Fife.
They have collected 1120 kilos (over a ton) of rubbish, including more than 800 discarded face masks and over 600 disposable vapes.
Fife’s love of Irn Bru
Eddie estimated the two discarded around eight bin bags of rubbish per day.
In Fife, there was one form of rubbish Fred and Eddie spotted time and time again.
Eddie said: “You lot love Irn Bru.
“There’s a high quantity of the drink in Fife and I know it’s a nice drink but it seems to be an easy item that’s thrown out of the car, unfortunately.”
Their entire trip has been documented on both Eddie and Fred’s Instagram pages, where they aim to raise awareness.
Relying solely on the kindness of strangers for a place to sleep at night, the duo have been welcomed into countless homes, hotels and charity accommodation.
But it’s not always been plain sailing.
“We’ve slept in a Salvation Army church, in a garage – where we almost got run over by a car – we’ve slept on a bench outside a pub,” Eddie said.
“We’ve just been quite lucky where hotels have put us up for the night, we stayed in a five star hotel and we stayed in the scouts camp.
“But this is it, this is the end, we’re about to cross the Tay Road Bridge to come in to Dundee.
“I think we’re going to feel fab when we arrive and we can take our bags off for the last time.
“It’s going to be a wonderful achievement because eight weeks ago it was the beginning, and now we’ve done it.”
The pair plan to stay in Dundee until Thursday and hope to connect with local schools.
Eddie said: “We’ve done our share and it’s been fantastic – we’ve been into seven schools, spoken to animated assemblies with over 1000 students and talked to loads of people.
“We’re going to stay in Dundee for a few days and hopefully hook up with a couple of schools while we’re here.
“We’d like to do a shout out to any schools who would like to get in touch.”
Two years ago, the pair embarked on a similar feat in France where they managed to pick up over 2300 facemasks.
Eddie said: “We always knew we’d do England and Scotland at some point and I thought why not do 500 miles again and when I looked at Edinburgh it was only 460 and Dundee was 500.
‘We’re not giving lessons or preaching, we’re just doing’
“As humans we’re ingesting 5 grams of plastic a week, so we’re all consuming, breathing in and eating 5 grams of it a week.
“When I heard 92% of fish and chips contained plastic I thought: ‘I’ve got to do something on my level’ and it’s been fun – we’re not giving lessons or preaching, we’re just doing.
“We’ve got to stop littering, the world too beautiful.
“What we’ve seen over the last 500 miles and two months is just pure human kindness but also the natural beauty of England and this part of Scotland so we want to share that.”
Conversation