The past few weeks have seen our shores being battered by a succession of storms, sweeping in from the Atlantic, hammering winds and driving rain, lumping the sea into a huge swell to pound at our cliffs and beaches.
The storms surged in, one after the other, brief windows of calm in between. But at last they abated. The weather patterns eased. The storms stopped coming.
And so I wandered down to the beach to see what had changed, and headed across the causeway to see how the Isle of Portland had fared.
As I scrambled up the landward side of Chesil Beach the first thing that struck me was the tide line – seaweed and assorted flotsam and jetsam – that showed where the waves had overtopped the bank. There was more debris when I reached the top, as if the sea had flared up in a fit of rage to discard her burden of litter and waste – it was as if she was saying ‘Here, take it all back!’
I came across a twisted tangle of wire, and it took me a few moments to realise what it was – one of those wire cages they use, filled with stone, to build up the sea defences, now empty and mangled, thrown aside by the fury of the waves.
Then – a cliff where there had been no cliff before.
The whole of the seaward side of the beach had been scooped out and swept away. A steep pebble slope fell away from my feet, and below, at sea level, it flattened out, anglers like tiny dots along the edge of the water.
The kids ran down squealing in a flurry of pebbles as if they were scree running, and then took ages to clamber back up through the sliding stones. While I stood and looked out along the beach at its strange new profile, stretching away from me as far as I could see.
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