English Coast News

The RSPB is to take radical action to save one of it’s most popular reserves from the sea.

Titchwell Marsh on the north Norfolk coast faces inundation by the North Sea and so to protect the future of the reserve the decision has been taken to allow the sea to reclaim part of the reserve in order to save the remainder. The current 30-year-old sea walls are being slowly eroded. If the waters were to break through the current defenses then the entire reserve, which is a mix of brackish and fresh water marshes and reedbed, will be lost along with the habitat for rare breeding birds like the bittern and marsh harrier.

Under the proposed scheme, the sea wall will be moved back behind the present brackish marsh, which will be allowed to return to tidal saltmarsh.

This will allow new and improved sea defences to protect the fresh water marsh and the reedbeds with their  breeding birds from the rising tides. At the same time visitor facilities will be enhanced and it is hoped the newly created saltmarsh will become a visitor attraction in its own right.

Rob Coleman, the reserve’s manager, is quoted on the news section of the RSPB website: “I know this is a huge change for Titchwell and for the very many people who share our deep love for the reserve, but the need to go ahead with this scheme was clear.

“We faced a stark choice between sacrificing the brackish marsh or losing the whole site to the sea.

“In drawing up these changes we have listened hard to local people and to visitors. As a result, the new-look site will keep and improve on all the things that make Titchwell special for them.”

Sources:
RSPB website (news)

The Independent website has published an interesting list of little known coasts, woodlands and gardens in their This Britain section. Of particular interest to English Coast of course is the coastal list:

1. Rathlin Island (Northern Ireland)
2. Isle of Eigg (Scotland)
3. Silecroft, Cumbria
4. Arnside, Cumbria
5. Llandudno Pier (Wales)
6. Skomer Island (Wales)
8. Clevedon Pier, Somerset
9. Watchet, Somerset
10. Wembury, Devon
11. Pednevounder Beach, Cornwall
12. Brownsea Island, Dorset
13. St Nectan’s Glen, Cornwall
14. Pagham Harbour, West Sussex
15. Minnis Bay, Kent
16. Horsey Beach, Norfolk
17. Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
18. Spurn Head, Yorkshire
19. Low Newton-by-the-Sea, Northumberland
20. Isle of May (Scotland)

We recomend visiting the Secret Britain page for full details of each location, although some of the above are already included on the main English Coast site so we will link in to those pages soon.

A forty ton boat beacon which has been stranded on Formby beach since January 2007, has finally been dismantled and removed.

The boat beacon was built in 1929 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and was stranded during a winter storm in 2007. It was washed too far ashore for it to be refloated and taken back out to sea.

The removal operation was undertaken by Peel Ports, assisted by two boilermakers from North West Ship Repairs who were able to cut the enormous structure into sub-sections.

The Peel Ports harbour master Captain Gallimore is quoted by the Formby Times: “This kind of beacon, which is a floating navigational aid, is now arcane. You do not see them anymore.”