We're just back from two weeks in Ireland and we were surprised at the amount of litter we found at many of the megalithic sites there.

We're used to seeing the odd discarded tissue or intentionally placed tealight or floral offering, but this was a whole new level.

We collected two full bags of empty beer cans from inside Callaigh Berra's House passage grave on Slieve Gullion. As anyone who has visited this monument will know, there is a pretty steep climb of over 200m up what is euphemistically termed a "path" to reach it - not the obvious choice of location for an impromptu tinny party.

Although the offenders were considerate enough to leave the plastic bags in there as well so we could collect the cans in them, they had also enjoyed a jumbo bag of pistachio nuts and had used one of the two surviving basin stones as a target for the empty shells.

Probably the worst case was at the Ballymacdermot court tomb where most of a stripped out fitted kitchen had been dumped. We pulled a large worktop complete with kitchen sink out of the tomb. This was not casual, you would need a truck or van to transport that much rubbish.

Some people.