For 60 years, ever since the beach was cleared of debris after the war I have taken great pleasure in being able to walk along the beach.
When my children were small we were disconcerted to discover that the new groynes to the north of Ocean Bay were a barrier over which we had to scramble if we were agile enough.
Last year there was such delight when those groynes were breached to enable a survey and we surged through and made it to the foot of the chalk cliffs. We couldn’t believe it when those gaps were plugged.
THEN IMAGINE OUR JOY THIS WINTER!
The fascination of watching the surge of sand upon the beach and the pas des deux of the bulldozers.
The piles being driven into the sand.
We watched with baited breath to see what kind of groynes we were going to have.
Then joy of joys we realised that they were not going to tower over us, nor divide the beach like some Berlin wall.
We could skip and jump along the water, unimpeded.
We could sally forth towards the cliffs without obstruction.
Imagine my despair this month as those groynes have been girdled and braced.
The effort required to cross these monstrous hurdles is quite beyond me.
The simple pleasure of a walk along the beach has disappeared forever for the vast majority of Swanage residents who are too old or too young.
Is this latest addition to the groynes really necessary?
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Posted by Anonymous to swanage view at 4/03/2006 12:14:50 AM
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2 comments:
How we agree with this posting. My wife and I tried a stroll along the beach this week and it was more like Aintree Racecourse.
This i'm afraid will become worse as the sand levels drop.
We will find ourselves again leaping over 2-3ft hurdles.
How sad these groynes now have these cross braces as this increases 'jumping' over by a foot of so.
Strolling now is no simple matter for older legs, instead we have to stick to a 'holding' pen.
At least we haven't ended up with ten nine-feet wide, nine-feet high boulder groynes as originally proposed.
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