We love sand!

Ask any volunteer or Quest staff member who has worked on our Kenya Water Relief Project over the years and they will tell you that sand is a very useful thing indeed...

Not only can it be used to mix the cement to be used to build the sand dams, but it is also vital to the working of the dams in storing and filtering water, protecting it from parasites and reducing evaporation.  The clue's in the name really.

A sand dam is a reinforced concrete wall built across a dry riverbed, which when it rains, forces some water underground, filtering it clean, protecting from mosquitoes and snails, and preventing evaporation. A simple piece of engineering that will alter the lives of the communities around it forever.  Brilliant.

 But what caught our eye today weren't the useful properties of sand but its artistic merits...  The artist Jamie Wardley from Bradford has created giant artworks on beaches up and down the UK - a race against time before the tide comes in!

We's have a go ourselves down here in Brighton, but something tells us the effect wouldn't be quite the same with the pebbles...