Shoreham girls' beach delight

Beach resident Andy Lamper, 38, last week found more than 100 yellow casings with toys inside, like those found in children's chocolate eggs.

With them were car parts, oranges, onions, baby formula and hair conditioner, believed to have drifted from the MSC Napoli ship, which grounded off Devon in January.

Software developer Andy told the Herald: "I was just walking the dog. At first, I saw the car parts and I thought someone had been fly tipping. They were all on the high-water mark."

Andy returned with daughters Emma, aged eight, and Nicola, five, to collect the yellow casings and the family has been assembling the toys inside ever since.

Andy said: "Some of them are covered in tar and are fit for the bin, but the kids were excited about picking them up.

"We have had quite a lot of fun making them up. The instructions had disintegrated. Some bits were a bit fiddly.

"The really amusing thing was that there were even toy boats among them '“ it just seemed so ironic."

Andy added items being washed up on Shoreham Beach wasn't a rare occurence, and a large amount of timber had recently appeared there.

He said: "There were big winds last week. I am always keen to go and have a look after it has been windy because you find some interesting things out there. All the stuff you find washed up is quite fascinating, but this was something else."