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A clean-up operation is under way after a seaside village became covered in sand blown off a beach in high winds.
:)
When they did this at Southend on Sea it was more like a gravel and sand mix rather than fine sand. During the high winds earlier in the year quite a lot of the sand came off the beach but nothing remotely as much as shown in the above linked article.
Before the beach re-profile the water used to come to the base of a fairly high sea wall and the waves, especially during rough weather, were starting to destroy the wall. Millions(?) of cubic metres of sea bed was dredged, transported to Southend, and pumped onto the beach. The beach now starts near the top of the sea wall and slopes gently over approx100 metres down to the low tide level. (The tide at Southend goes out leaving approx 1+ miles of mud to the low water's edge.
When did they do that and which beaches? (not been down there for a year!)
As a kid, I made various trips to visit an aged aunt in Southend. I only remember miles of mud, I never saw any sand, and the tide was always out. The recent pictures of thousands of holiday-makers sitting on sand amazed me. I always enjoyed the pier railway.
From memory - late 1990s from the east of Pier starting at the "Golden Mile" and way past the beach by Southchurch park. By the Southchurch park area you go up the six stairs to the top of the wall and about 3 steps down to the beach - there used to be a dozen or more steps to the beach.
There was a pumping barge moored up for months and about once a day a dredger turned up, the sand was pumped ashore and bulldozers profiled the beach. I believe the dredge was from the Clacton area.
What was dredged/pumped was more like the sand ballast mix you buy at the builders merchant for making concrete but that doesn't stop the day trippers sitting on the beach. There has been some tidal erosion since which has separated some of the finer sand from the shingle so you get bands of sand then a band of shingle along the water line. In some parts of the beach weeds are growing in the beach close to the top of the sea wall.
As the tide times change by approx an hour each days there are periods when you have seen the reverse - the tide always in. 100 yards of beach and a miles plus of mud and you may have missed the beaches :)
on the same day when there was a lot of adverse publicity about how many people were not obeying social distancing on Southends' beaches with media coverage to prove it I drove down the miles of Southend seafront and didn't come to the same conclusion.
If you want to show somewhere is crowded use a long lens from a low angle. If they had used a drone for the TV footage a different story may have had to be told.
Actually completed 2002 and a very much longer stretch of beach than I remembered - Page 233 onwards
I was going to say, well that matches what was already there - however there is a fair chance that is only because what was already there was a result of earlier dredging rather than mother nature. ISTM that the closest you get to a "real" sandy beach only really starts at or around East Beach up by Shoebury.
Ah, sorry I misread that as being recently. Yup I was somewhat aware of the historic work. (and have some recollection of seeing some beach profiling being done when they finally removed the town gas jetty up towards Southchurch).
As a young kid we went on holiday to Langland Bay in the Gower Peninsular - and I remember being somewhat confused by the warnings on the beach that swimming was only allowed when the tide was *out* (due to rocks on the beach).
I realised then my entire concept of the difference between high and low tide was kind of skewed by experience at Southend! There the difference was only a rather underwhelming 150 yards or so.
That is similar to my experience on Margate beach, where there was a shell warning.
Meanwhile, across the sea:
I think it was Time Team, but I recall a dig near Wales where an entire village had been buried in sand in the middle ages. Risk of living near the sea, I guess. Happened one night during a storm.
Kenfig
That's the one !
There's also a submerged village you can see clear as day somewhere off the Sussex coast ... "Dun" something.
Dunwich, Suffolk - Blackadder's Dunny-On-The-Wold In Sussex there is (was) old Winchelsea,
Quite a few shells there from memory...
Some years ago (probably 20!) I visited a complete Victorian shell grotto that they re-discovered there. Some of its colour and lustre lost due to too much candle lighting in its early days, but still quite impressive.
Sorry I have misled you, the warning was for artillery shells being fired from german forces. As a young child I thought of sea shells being dangerous.
Ah yes, slightly different...
(for that locally you need to go down to Shoeburry beach not far from the MoD firing range - its not unheard of for some of the shell that turn up there to be not the fishy variety!)
Dun'sinking? :-)
A couple of years back the council imposed restrictions on the Shoeburyness beach, or more correctly on the low tide mud. A couple of hundred yards from the beach there is now a line of very large yellow buoys with instructions not to proceed beyond that line to go further out on the mile or so of mud. This was introduced after finding some buried unexploded ordinance in the area.
However, over the past 40+ years there must have been a VERY large number going out on that beach to meet the tide.
The dodgy area is east of the anti submarine boom which is still MOD owned/controlled and has been used for test firing for around 300 years. This is not open to the public.
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