No thumbs showing, thanks guys. We also have these problems JayCeeDee:
” The biggest problem round here is the “atmosphere”!!! Bl**dy farmers are muck-spreading and have been for the last week or two?? it can get eye-watering!!
The other problem we get is round-about related. The seaweed comes in onto the beach and stays there, hot weather follows, stinking beaches follow!! ”
If it’s really, really bad, the smell that is more than a stink and grabs the back of your throat, it’s either Pig muck or has Pig muck in the mix.
During the last few days of storms and heavy rain, a very strong onshore breeze has acted with high incoming tides to batter our beaches and send sand up over the Coastal Path. Seaweed is at the fringes of the tide as it turns, but most of the weed seems to go out again. Another problem is jelly fish, which sink into the sand and the big ones can sting if trodden upon. This is exacerbated on Lincolnshire beaches by the annual “Renourishment” I have spoken about before: a Netherlands company is employed to dredge the seabed farther out, pumping sand, gravel and whatever else is on the seabed, up onto the beach in one big heap, then spread it along the beach in a long ridge. This is then colonised by Marram Grass*, forming dunes. The result is that the seawall I remember from 20 years ago, is now buried beneath all of this, and a seawall is now redundant. Not only that, but the high ridges and dunes are a better tidal flooding defence, as the sea runs back through the porous sand and into the sea again. It’s a much better coastal defence than concrete walls. And the Dutch are coastal defence experts, of course.
Places like Mablethorpe and Skegness are vulnerable: large parts of our coastal towns and villages are either slightly below sea level, or only just above it. Hence the deadly floods of 1953. The renourishment has dealt with this threat well.
The rain has now decreased to the point of very light drizzle. Tomorrow, after my Grimsby hospital bloods and clinic visit, I will have to clean out the gutter that feeds one of my water butts, which is not filling as it should. I suspect that the trap valve is full of moss, thanks to those $$$***!!!! birds that scatter the stuff about, looking for insects and eggs.
*Marram Grass & dunes: http://tinyurl.com/y7qbb77e
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
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