Risking life and limb to bring you the latest breaking stories as they happen . . . well, ok, I was having a cup of tea at the beach cafe and noticed it was our turn for the big Tonka toy to pile up the sand for winter.
An excited crowd - well, us three and a few pigeons. It's like a building site, there's always something very therapeutic watching blokes working big machines, whether they are cranes, piledrivers or diggers. Today it's diggers.
Perhaps the most boring pictures ever . . . but I like 'em, and news can't always be exciting. They were also lowering the slipway to receive a ship in the repair yard - I nearly filmed that too, but I came to my senses just in time.
7 comments:
They are raising the beach, so the sandbank in the harbour doesn't look so high.
and they've built an inflatable ship to put on the slipway in the harbour so they can show it's not that bad anyway...
If this is supposed to protect the seafront buildings during the winter I think they have underestimated the size of the waves, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tides/ I have asked the council to use the sand from the harbour dredging to replace Ramsgate main sands which were considerably larger and offered much more costal protection before they were removed and used as the infill for Port Ramsgate.
I got the idea from somewhere that the barrier was just there to conserve the nice soft sand up the top of the beach rather than actually protecting anything more concrete.
Transferring the sand from the harbour sounds like a good plan - can't they just chuck it over the harbour wall and spread it about a bit (I may have missed my vocation, clearly I should be a civil engineer...)?
Michael, are you sure the Port Ramsgate infill was taken from the Main Sands?
Tony, yes back in the 1970s we were much less aware of the dangers of rising sea levels and using the beach for the port infill was the cheapest option, a huge beach built up on the WW2 wire defences and was held in place by them, I have had several expert opinions that it was this beach that stopped the pavilion from being badly damaged in the 1953 storm and tidal surge. I you look at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tides/ you will see how shoaling beach significantly reduces the wave action, in the 1897 tidal surge when there was only a small beach all of the buildings where the pavilion is now were demolished, see newspaper accounts at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/ in the 1978 storm, after the beach had been removed a considerable amount of harbour wall was demolished see pictures at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/latest_news.htm I have been trying to get TDC to put the sand dredged from the harbour on the main beach with something to help bind it together.
Egg yolk?
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