FOLLOWING the National Trust's recent report about the predicted erosion of parts of the Welsh coastline, I thought some of the media went over the top in its reporting.
BBC Wales’ evening news bulletin dedicated almost half its programme to covering the item. The Daily Post devoted a page lead to the story, and generally the story was dragged out like a dog hanging to a bullock's tail.
Calm down, I say!
Erosion has been taking place for centuries, irrespective of global warming. The shape of the British Isles, and the world, is changing continuously. The sea takes a bit and gives a bit back. Some we win and some we lose!
Take Flintshire, for instance: In 1947 my father said to me that a century earlier Sealand had been under sea water.”
I don't know if he got his time scales right but I think the point he made was factual. Since then, as the sea has receded, we have gained thousands of acres (or should it be hectares?), which is now highly productive agricultural and building land.
Erosion is a natural phemoni....femomemon....phem....it's a natural remarkable living process.
Looking through our kitchen window across the Dee estuary, I can see masses of marshland either side of the main channel: It seems to me the river mouth is offering more land for reclamation as time goes by.
In the Queensferry area, near the Victorian blue bridge, a “new cut” or canalisation was built in 1737.
In earlier centuries it was a mightier waterway than it is today and large ships could discharge their cargo at wharves situated inland along the city walls at Chester.
I often wonder if a few more miles of the Dee were canalised, would it release a few more thousands of acres of usable land or would it cause more problems; and how would it cope at high tide?
I don't know... you tell me!
It's a changing world, whichever way we look at it. Let’s all calm down and go with the flow, I say!
