A BOAT charter owner says he was ‘overwhelmed’ by volunteers after organising a clean-up of Little Cumbrae.

Ronnie Doolan, owner of Clyde Charters, organised the island-wide clean to get it ship-shape with travel to the smaller Cumbrae set to resume next month.

The Skelmorlie man says he wanted to pay back islanders for allowing his company to run tours after they put it on their stop-off list back in September.

He said: “We have been running trips to Little Cumbrae for a while now and are ready to restart visits ahead of the summer season.

“Before our first tour, we wanted to make sure we gave the island a proper spruce up before we took anyone over.

“We have always been quite particular about telling our passengers to treat the island with respect when they’re visiting.

“As a thank you to the islanders for their continued support, we wanted to do our bit to help give Little Cumbrae a freshen up.”

Ronnie says the online response to his suggested spruce up was huge and he took a group of enthusiastic volunteers to the island last week.

He explained: “We put an advert on Facebook and we were bowled over by people wanting to help.

“We managed to do two trips with 12 volunteers on each and it has made a massive difference to the island.

“We tidied up the paths, trimmed back overgrown bushes, placed flag markers on the paths so people won't get lost and swept up broken glass.

“It definitely looks a lot better than it did before and it will be spotless for the first visitors of the summer arriving.”

Ronnie says he has plans to make a Little Cumbrae clean a regular occurrence - and believes that locals will happily join in to help maintain the area’s natural beauty.

He said: “We want to make it a regular event now and do an island clean at least a couple of times during the summer season.

“The volunteers are happy to do it and everyone gets that feelgood factor from helping the environment.

“I think a lot of people are realising that Scotland is such a beautiful place and we need to protect that at all costs.”