Thursday's annual Coverack Tide Challenge has been given a twist this year and become a "sand challenge" in a bid to help the beach recover from last week's storms.

Flash flooding caused the road to become a waterfall, which then continued onto the beach and swept much of the sand away with it.

Now Coverack Space 2000, which organises the usual tide challenge, is instead setting the competition to see how much sand can be moved from below a set line to build the biggest sand structure, starting at 2pm on Thursday.

Points will be awarded for both height and area of the structure and its distance up the beach. Points will be deducted for the number of people in each team.

The group explained: "The sand on Coverack beach always fluctuates, but last week the top of the beach was the base of a massive waterfall and much of the sand has been displaced – it would take a lot of westerly winds to bring it back so we thought we could give it a helping hand."

In order to help the group continue putting on community events, a minimum donation of £2 per family will be charged.