When Coastlines Attack

And so to Happisburgh … or what's left of it.

This is the pretty church; surrounded by the graves of brave sailors and fishermen who will soon find their rest disturbed as they are exhumed and moved to a safer location.
And here's the reason why:
While most of Norfolk's beautiful coastline is actually growing through saltmarsh and sandbank and is home to hundreds of square miles of spectacular nature reserves, one part is rapidly disappearing.
Poor, helpless Happisburgh.
The erosion rate is currently around forty to fifty feet a year, but in the worst case a whole twelve acre field disappeared in one night's storm.
Twelve acres is fucking huge!
Gone … in one night.

And the village of Whimpwell has submerged completely. It lies to the seaward side of Happisburgh and indeed is rather moist these days. In 1987 the local sub-aqua club found the old quay heading way out to sea.

This is me standing on Whimpwell Road.
The stretch of road I stood on the last time I was here you can see halfway down the cliff.
The village is underneath the blue bit at the top of the picture.

This hole used to be a house.
Below it you can make out successive lines of trashed sea defences.
The North Sea gets kind of funnel shaped around here and when the 110mph winter storms come tearing straight down from the North Pole like the wrath of God the tidal surge gets stuck in the funnel and the whole lot gets thrown at Happisburgh.
Thrown rather hard.

This is where the last stretch of the road tumbled down the cliff.

And these were houses before last month's storms.

Property prices round here are kinda silly.
You can buy a beautiful house for the price of a decent meal, but you're not going to be able to enjoy it for very long.

This will be the next one to go. Perhaps before this coming spring.
That pointy piece of sand is probably gone already.
And that's one of Happisburgh's problems: it's not exactly built on rock.
More like a very soggy sandstone with the consistency of a nice French cheese.

This is the new bay that has appeared within my memory and swallowed the southern half of the village.
The government's current policy is called "sustainable coastlines", which basically means they're not going to spend any money on protecting Happisburgh as none of them lives there.
The most they've done is to roll a load of rocks down onto the beach, which - as you can see by the cliffs behind - hasn't really helped at all.

So …
If you want to visit Happisburgh, you'd better be quick.