Well this thread has become timely – we had another really big storm today, a monster! Timetable: before noon SWMBO and I drove to Mablethorpe, it was sunny and warm (21ºc) and BBC Weather gave no rain until 5 pm for our area, definitely no T-storms. We usually park at the southern end of the town to miss the crowded holiday car parks: Queen’s Park sometimes has free road parking, but it’s only £1/hour in the P&D. (Double the ticket time, for Blue Badges) That end of the beach is quieter, there’s a couple of cafes, Queen’s Park has one cafe, boats and plenty of children’s attractions, plus a small train, a large paddling pool and a big Crazy Golf pitch. Walking around the big lake is best avoided unless you don’t mind Duck and Geese poo on your footwear! Many years ago, I fell in there after a heavy night out. Not recommended…??
We walked north along the beach to the main part where all the Grockles congregate, intending to make it right up to the North End and a cafe whose owners are family friends. That’s about a 2-mile walk. It became cloudy by about 1:30, then began to rain as we turned back. By the time we got to the car, we were soaked – we were both in shorts and thin tops. Drove home and from 2 miles inland, it was dry. Had a delayed lunch and at about 3:30, a massive storm hit the village. Hailstones, torrential rain which caused a 3″ deep river of water outside our lounge window, all the guttering overflowing, lightning which moved closer and closer. I was outside in it as usual, neghbours looking through the windows and shaking heads. An hour later, sun comes out and by now, the roads are dry, as if nothing happened. A mate in Louth says that there was just the edge of the rain there, soon stopped. That’s 2 miles down the road.
One bonus of the beach for me today, was the amount of washed-up flint flakes. For most of this year, and for the last few years, a team of specialists from the Netherlands have been “Renourishing” all Lincolnshire beaches. A huge Dutch dredger out at sea, pipes up seabed sand to the beach, a team takes it right up to the Coast Path and then reditributes along the beach, piling it up. The idea is to stop coastal erosion and it is working: there are sand dunes developing all along the beach. The sand works better than concrete, it absorbs the waves at high tide and the sea drains back down through the sand. My ‘bonus’ is the flint: I have always been interested in Prehistory and there are flakes, scrapers, arrowheads and hand axes being thrown up from out in the North Sea. I find it amazing that I can pick up a piece of worked flint, that may have been handled last by another human thousands of years ago. I also find it a little disappointing that very few others also find that fascinating, but that’s another story.
Yet another History lesson!
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I'm out.
