The first toilet on Long Beach was a spade, propped up and ready for campers to dig a hole for burying their poo (2003). Needed a pee? Find a bush. This might explain the incredible amount of nettles which still grow in the area (not good for bottoms). You can see the shelter the spade leaned against to the left (it must have been in use when the picture was taken; note the donations box which is now a campsite honesty box located be-hind the log cabin).

Following this, we installed a square box on runners, built with the help of Edin-burgh University Dirty Weekenders. You could hitch this up to a Landrover and tow it to a deep hole. The lack of roof meant that you could easily see if it was occupied (a user’s head was visible), and the views were stunning. It wasn’t so much fun in rain though, and we received some complaints that users couldn’t “go” because of stage fright. That’s the toilet to the left<

The Thunderbox(TM) looked flimsy, and was, but for the first time we were com-posting poo and separating urine, which meant that smells were reduced. If you’re interested in urine separation, the Thun-derbox(TM) has a gutter in the front of the seat which catches urine from seated females and males. Urine was diverted out to big blue barrels at first, and then into the bushes when we realised that we couldn’t find any immediate uses for big barrels of pee. It was also the first time we were able to provide a toilet that could sit two people. You can see pictures of the Thunderbox(TM) to the right: the top picture shows essential maintenance being carried out a couple of years after it was first installed. The picture to the right shows the Thun-derbox(TM) with wellies hanging from it, full of geranuiums, pansies and fuschias. Unfortunately the Thunderbox(TM) im-ploded in a massive westerly, resulting in us converting the square-box-wildlife-hide back into a toilet again, which was ideal for twitchers who didn’t want to stop their hobby for a minute, but wasn’t ideal as we were essentially putting poo into a big hole in the ground again. Inci-dentally, this toilet / hide combo utilised a “red flag system” to warn others when the toilet was occupied (we thought it was more fun than a lock). It was time to think about a proper solu-tion that would keep users dry, wouldn’t blow away, and was pleasant to utilise, so an initial application was put into Awards for All to fund an all-singing, all dancing, non-smelly double-concrete-vault post-and-beam, turf-roofed Natsol compost toilet (right and see separate info sheet).

The box on runners was never going to be a permanent solution, so we decided to go down the composting route (rather than the “put it all in a big hole and forget about it” direction). This led to the pur-chase of a Thunderbox(TM) from Devon (left, shown soon after construction). We converted the toilet above into a wildlife hide by putting a roof on it and changing the seating arrangement.