Widower's 'Message in a Bottle' dream for love backfires as he's told off for littering beaches

On the surface it seemed like a touching idea from a widower looking for love after the death of his beloved wife from cancer; cast hundreds of bottles out to sea, each containing a plea for a soul mate to come forward.

But Craig Sullivan’s attempt to find romance led to an unexpected backlash over the prospect of dozens of the bottles washing up on Britain’s beaches.

The 49-year-old a consumer technology designer had been inspired by the Police’s hit song Message in a Bottle, which pictured a lonely castaway’s search for company answered in similar fashion.

His romantic gesture, which involved casting 2,000 bottles into the sea from various points around the British coastline, soon ran into trouble however, when walkers stumbled on dozens of them littering Rhossili Bay, near Swansea.

Helen Gill, who was strolling on the beach with her boyfriend last Saturday, was among those who feared that the bottles - which had drifted across the water from Hinkley Point in Cornwall - would be damaging to wildlife and add to the mountains of waste already polluting our oceans.

Ms Gill told The Telegraph: “I went for a beach walk and we came across about 30 glass bottles with lids. They had lots of messages inside about finding love. It's may be romantic, but what is it doing to the environment?”

She wrote a message of her own to Mr Sullivan, urging him to abandon his plan to cast hundreds more bottles adrift elsewhere around Britain, telling him: “Those bottles could be smashed before they land on our precious beach or stepped on.

“I would ask you to think of another more environmentally friendly way of carrying on with your campaign. When visiting our beaches you should leave only footprints.”

Fears were also expressed after Mr Sullivan left a similar number of bottles, each containing his plea for love, near salmon breeding grounds in the River Cree in Scotland. Dozens of people used social media to urge Mr Sullivan to scrap his romantic project.

“He might have thought it was a good idea but I don’t think he’s really thought it through,” said Ms Gill, 36, from Dunvant, Swansea.

“There’s already so much rubbish in our seas and rivers and the last thing we need is more bottles dumped into them,”

Mr Sullivan, who had planned on casting the bottles at sea while travelling round the country with his teenage daughter, has now abandoned the project in the face of objections from Ms Gill and others.

"There has been a rather unpleasant backlash to my intentions, which were always not to achieve this sort of reaction,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “It's been quite saddening but it won't affect my optimism or plans - to find someone new.”

Not that the messages he sent out to sea have been completely in vain. 

Mr Sullivan has already been contacted by several women interested in striking up a friendship.

"As it happens I've been contacted by a lady in Ireland and one from the west coast of Scotland and I've got a couple of dates arranged," he said on Wednesday. "So some good has come out of it."