A giant piece of sand art has been created to help drive home the importance of social distancing for those visiting the seaside and other popular places.

Artists from West Yorkshire-based Sand In Your Eye created the massive drawing on the beach at Whitby, North Yorkshire, to encourage responsible behaviour from visitors to the popular seaside town.

The piece, which only lasts until the next high tide, depicts a person wearing a face covering made up of lines that are 2m apart and contained within a coronavirus cell.

It is accompanied by the text: “2m. Together we protect each other.”

Jamie Wardley, from Sand In Your Eye, said: “We just wanted to do a drawing to remind people that social distancing is still really, really important.”

Mr Wardley said: “The NHS has done an incredible job and I’ve got a sister-in-law who’s an ICU nurse, and she knows what it’s been like.

“So when you do visit places like Whitby, which are so beautiful and amazing, just try and keep socially distanced.”

Mr Wardley said it had been difficult during lockdown with no commissions coming in but he thinks the crisis has brought the nation together in support of the vulnerable.

“Hopefully, as lockdown is easing, things can get back to normal but we want it to stay that way. We don’t want it to trip back into what it was before when nothing can happen,” he said.

“It’s also been a national movement to protect more vulnerable people in society and that’s a gem of a thing.”

Mr Wardley said he hoped this attitude to the vulnerable would extend across the world to other countries which are being badly hit, including Yemen.