Tag: coastal

You may have heard about Happisburgh…..

If you follow environment issues in the media you’ll probably have noticed that this Norfolk village is currently the go-to location for items about sea-level rise and coastal erosion. Like other communities on the East Anglian coast it has been threatened by the sea for hundreds of years. Some – like the nearby Whimpwell and the better-known Dunwich – have long since disappeared beneath the waves. Jane and I had booked a week’s holiday in the Norfolk Broads for the first week in May, and I noticed that Happisburgh was only a few miles away. I thought the village might provide some interesting subject matter for the photographer.

I had no idea what to expect visually other than the “Road Closed” sign that features in all the media. Arriving late in the morning I clambered across a pile of earth blocking an old field gateway to reach the cliff top. Directly below me a flock of sand martins were excitedly excavating nesting burrows in the sandy escarpment facing the sea. They barely noticed me at all and only made themselves scarce when a kestrel cruised by. This photo-op felt like a real bonus; the only drawback being the strong and distracting shadows of the birds created by the sun beating down from a clear blue sky. The sand martins were frantically landing and taking off again; you could see tiny showers of sand falling from burrow entrances, and a close examination of the photographs shows a pattern of scrape marks made by their claws on the cliff-face.

By the time I got down to the beach it was about 1pm. and the sun was high in the sky, creating some very harsh light: definitely not the time of day for the landscape photographer to be at work! All sorts of debris lay on the sand; bits of tarmac complete with double-yellow lines, a manhole with the cover missing, sections of brick wall and reinforced concrete. Electric cables trailed from the cliff top and pipework stuck out at strange angles. A brick septic tank was perched precariously close to the cliff top. And it all looked rather disappointing in the unforgiving light.

But a short distance further on – wow! Here were the skeletons of sea defences and two large rectangular concrete blocks resting on metal girders that emerged from the sand. I had no idea what they were but they looked bizarre; and wispy cirrus clouds in a deep blue sky added to the surreal nature of the scene. Normally successful landscape photography requires shadows to help give a three-dimensional quality to a scene. But here the almost complete lack of them seemed to add to the dreamlike quality of my surroundings. It was a one day in a hundred day.

Returning to the village I had a chat with the ladies at the “Sarnies by the Sea” sandwich shack. I said I had heard of Happisburgh for all the wrong reasons, but how did they feel? One said that she felt very bitter that the authorities were happy to let her village fall into the sea “like all the others”. This was the reaction of most of those I talked to, and you have to sympathise with them. One resident’s house had been valued in 2008 at less than the cost of a loaf of bread. Another villager explained that the concrete blocks are the foundations for a metal staircase which ran from the cliff-top down to the beach. It opened in 2003. The extraordinary speed with which the coastline is retreating, and the very low-lying nature of its hinterland, explains why official policy for this stretch of coast is “managed retreat”.

Unfortunately by this time the sand martins were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps nest-burrowing is a morning only job for them? I did find their activities illuminating, though. If a fragile creature like a sand martin can burrow into the cliffs using only their tiny claws what chance does the land have against such a formidable opponent, fuelled by climate change, as the North Sea?

NB : For more details about Happisburgh and coastal erosion there see the comprehensive Village website.

/http://happisburgh.org.uk/

The photograph on its homepage is worth studying. I’m not sure when it was taken but since then the caravan site on the far left-hand side has been relocated completely and I estimate that land equivalent to the outermost three rows of caravans has now disappeared.

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A Day at the Seaside – New Quay (Part One)

A couple of weekends ago last my partner Jane and I decided to have “a day at the seaside”.  Although we live only a few miles from Aberystwyth, going there is such a routine that it is sometimes difficult to drag one’s feet away from the well trodden paths we have each made in the town. So we decided to head down to New Quay, about 25 miles to the south, and what is more, go (most of the way) on the bus. Arriving on the outskirts of the village we made a connection on to the “Cardi Bach” – a local bus that twice daily links the villages between there and Cardigan. It seemed more like a fairground ride than a bus service as it rattled down the steep, narrow and overgrown lane running down to the coast at Cwmtydi.  Having fortified ourselves with coffee there, we began the coastal walk to New Quay about five miles distant.

Many years ago I had what could almost be described as “a proper job”. It was in 1983 and I was employed on a Manpower Services Scheme to supervise the clearance and re-opening of various stretches of footpath along the Ceredigion coast. So it was  a trip down memory lane for me, although it is shameful to admit that I’ve not walked several lengths of the coast since the early 1980’s! One particular stretch of the coastal slope/hillside I remembered as being impossible to traverse despite there being a public footpath across it. In those early days it was necessary to descend right down to a narrow and remote pebbly beach and then after 100 yards or so climb back up on to the cliff top. Since those early days additional sums of money have been spent on these paths and some relatively major engineering projects completed, and they now form part of the All-Wales Coastal footpath. What really brought my mind back to those days was the sight of two footpath signs which I had designed and possibly even built myself back in early 1984 – much the worse for wear after more than thirty years out in the elements but still doing their job and now almost part of the landscape.

On the walk we met Arfon Williams, one of the RSPB’s top people in Wales. We stopped to have a chat and he told me that he was planning to return to Cwmtydi via Cwm Soden, a wooded valley which Jane and I had crossed via a footbridge. During my footpath survey and clearance days I had identified Cwm Soden as having a particularly diverse range of butterflies and Arfon mentioned that it was now managed for them by the National Trust in conjunction with the charity Butterfly Conservation. I wondered if my observations in summer 1983 had contributed to the knowledge about Cwm Soden and the conservation effort now made there. I’d like to think so.

It was a good walk- if rather bird-free – and after a couple of hours (well, three….) we arrived at the bustling holiday village of New Quay. On this sunny Saturday afternoon it was absolutely heaving with visitors. The beach was thronged with families and the high-pitched voices of happy children were everywhere to be heard.  There were queues for ice-creams and chips and it really was the archetypal British summer seaside holiday experience. There is still a resident population of bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay and New Quay is also the centre for dolphin watching in Wales. Several operators run boat trips out of the harbour to see them. There is also a conservation presence there – I should damn well hope so! In particular I popped in to the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre. It so happened they were running a 8 hour dolphin survey boat trip the following day and they had one space left! So it was back home on the bus then an early start the following day and a drive back down to New Quay. It was hardly good planning but that spare place definitely had my name on it!

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