Britain’s newest islets are made of wet wipes

The British Isles is acquiring some new additions. These nascent islets are not made of granite or limestone, but of agglomerations of wet wipes and mud. The largest is a metre deep, spans the width of two tennis courts and sits at a bend in the Thames by Hammersmith Bridge in London. It was measured last summer by volunteers from Thames21, a charity, which has been tracing the formation of such monstrosities for seven years. It reckons that there are at least nine wet-wipe islets in the Thames, and that smaller ones may be forming in the bends of other rivers.