Coastal Erosion

Where I am currently living is about as far from the sea that it is possible to get in the UK. Well maybe not quite that far, but certainly equidistant from East and West coast and North and South just does not come into it. In fact, given a map of mainland Britain (England Wales and Scotland), I live about as near the centre as the eye can judge. It is a very controversial subject, the exact geographical centre of Britain- so many 'what abouts', 'counting this, counting thats' , define centre exactly, so I don't even know why I mentioned it at all really. The point being that since going to the Isle of Wight and Pompey and back to childhood memories of afternoons spent by the seaside, I had not realised how much I miss the sea. Probably like everything else I had just pushed it all away because there was nothing I could do to change circumstances of where I had washed up. You just accept the way things are and get on with it, because that is how it is.

Suddenly, with all that has been happening over the last two or three months though , it has become do-able. I mean, it always was do-able, but the motivation to get on and do it arrived suddenly one day like an exotic weed blooming in the cabbage patch. The decision can and has been taken to sell up and move. Not only that, but the actual broad location of where to move to in order to tick the emotional and practical boxes has been made. What remains is the research into an area that I have never previously been to and know very little about.

Actually I am , and always have been useless at geography. Geology fascinates me but I am broadly ignorant about it beyond the basic general knowledge. The area I am intending to move to is a very geographically and geologically relevent area, as it is a place which is rapidly disappearing into the sea. The Holderness coastline is the most rapidly eroding coastline in Europe- up to 3 metres a year. So to buy a house in what used to be called something -or- other- by- the- Sea could well become in the lifetime of my retirement project, Something-or-Other-In -the-Sea. No wonder the property is cheap- no wonder you get your dream house for your money and change as well, but judge it just right and as old age and infirmity catch up, at least the distance to walk to the beach will decrease accordingly.

There is something incredibly romantic, to me, about lost villages. Hotels are forever dropping over cliffs- one in which my brother worked for a while on the Isle of Wight slid into the sea one dark and stormy night. Fortunately he wasn't in it at the time. That's sort of a bit of passing interest, but somehow the thought of a church disappearing and tumbling down into the briny is sort of apocalyptic. The more I have read into this, and coastal erosion and the shifting outline of this island fortress is becoming something of an obsession at the moment, the more churches I see that have gone kerplunk. I imagine Stephen King's Langiloos, or invisible mouths biting chunks out of the clifftop roads and paths, eating and munching away at the substance of civilisation itself. Well maybe not quite, but the odd caravan site and pill box and coast road anyway.

Of course, I now know that the Yorkshire Wolds were creating in the ice ages by glacial action and chalk rockbeds laid down, and the Holderness coast line form Flamborough Head down to Spurn Point is made up of till which is being washed away systematically and has been for millions of years. It is the way of things, although the accelerartion of the process in teh 20th and 21st century is probably down to man made rather than natural factors. Interestingly enough, man's attempts to rectify and to protect the coast (and property thereon) tend to result in a right cock up. At Mappleton for example, were they have built groynes to trap the longshire drift so that the sediment and sand acan build up to form a protective beach for the waves to break on rather than attacking the soft clay of the cliffs and undermining them. It worked, for Mappleton. Unfortunately , South of Mappleton the problem became even worse and the beaches narrower and the erosion greater because, well Mappleton had bagged all the sand and it could be deposited further down.

For full explanation see HERE

So why on earth do I want to live somewhere that is likely to be buffeted by coastal storms and that I may have difficulty getting insurance on , that I can stress out every time there is a high tide? Even if it is my dream house in my dream plot, what on earth is possessing me to take this sort of risk with money and with well being and mental stability?

I don't know. Maybe I am sick of being sensible. Maybe I see it as a metaphor for the last quarter of my life. What actually is the point in playing safe and investing wisely, when one can felt the salt sting on one's cheeks and feel the stirring fear and exhilaration of the edge of the cliff at a time of life when it doesn't really matter any more?

Well, I know that when my friends and family find out what I am doing there is going to be an equivalent storm, and the waves of disapproval and plain hostility will tower high above me. I don't care. He will care, because he does think of the opinion of others- or maybe he thinks of their feelings more than I do. They will tell me how I am throwing everything I have worked for away for it to drop over a cliff, and that I will lose money 'investing' in a house on a clifftop. (or actually a mile or so away from it, but they won't see it that way because they have no imagination) He can't wait though. He is bubbling with anticipation. He likes being between the wolf and the abyss, although he wouldn't admit it. Know what? I think I do too, although I would never have guessed.