Category Archives: Storms

Weathering Storm Darragh

Posted on by
Reply

by the Curious Scribbler

We all knew Storm Darragh was on its way, and when it arrived it certainly lived up to the Met Office predictions.  The wind roared from the small hours on Saturday morning and continued, varying only slightly in violence all through the day.  Violent rainstorms came and went, stinging the face as they were delivered horizontally by the wind.   Towards evening the direction veered a little and only then did my handsome thirty year old Nordmann fir, which had been tossing its boughs all day without breaking them, suddenly and catastrophically toppled into the road. It didn’t immediately inconvenience many motorists for the road was already blocked in three other places, two by floods and one by a fallen oak.

Farewell my Nordmann Fir

Possibly more surprising was how totally the widespread loss of electricity disrupts 21st century life.  When the power went down on Saturday morning we didn’t just lose heat and light.  The router stopped working, the internet disappeared and the phone, which is now delivered by the router rather than a copper wire, ceases to work too.  So we reached for our mobile phones only to find there was no signal, because the booster mast which delivers it was also lacking power.  Only by driving up the road to a different location was contact with the world restored via 4G.

Venturing into Aberystwyth we found the whole town without light except for a few emergency lights above the back doors into some of the bigger stores.  The traffic lights were off.  And absolutely every shop was closed.  Clusters of disconsolate students roamed around the closed convenience stores.  In yesteryear a few small shops where the shopkeeper lived on the premises would have been open.  But tills don’t work without electricity and cards cannot be read.  The cashless society is totally dependent of electricity.  Those of us who have lived here for many years have the resources to weather a power cut comfortably:  log burners, camping gas cylinders, candles and lamps.  We cook our meals, and play scrabble by firelight until power is restored.   The bedrooms do cool down rather.  Central heating requires electricity to circulate the water.  But for the all-electric home a power cut must be very bleak indeed.

Even bleaker is a flood.  Unusually, the Ystwyth seems to have flooded more severely than the Rheidol, where the flood-plain playing fields became merely rather wet.  The Ystwyth and the Paith, which drains into it, flooded spectacularly, creating a single sheet of water from Tanybwlch beach to to Gosen.  I have stolen Alan Chamberlain’s photo from a Facebook post.

Alan Chamberlain’s photo of the Tanybwlch flats on Saturday 7 December

By Saturday afternoon the roadworks at Gosen were underwater, the plastic barriers bobbing in the flood, the metal ones collapsed under the water.  The lovely old house, Tynlone, was flooded. It must be over 30 years since I’ve seen the river quite so  full.  The water receded overnight leaving the usual mire of silt.  Only the field closest to Tanybwlch beach, which really wants to become a saltmarsh, remained deeply flooded by Sunday evening.

Devastation at Gosen

The swollen River Ystwyth by Llanychaiarn Church

Highest road flooding I can remember

By Monday only the field closest to Tanybwlch beach, which really wants to become a saltmarsh, remained deeply flooded. The dog was pleased to walk the length of the strand.  There was less change here than I had expected, only in one place had a fresh load of beach pebbles been taken right over the bar to cascade into the river.  On the seaward side the Sea Sandwort  Honkenya peploides has taken a hammering, the mat of rhizomes and stolons which stabilize the sand has been much reduced and the big quarry stones arranged to protect the shore have moved even further down the beach.  At the south end the sea had left huge heaps of bladder wrack and laminaria, piled more than knee deep along the strand line.  Plenty of marine life had been scooped from the sea bottom by the violent waves.  Creatures seldom seen have been thrown up by this storm.  Another contributor to Facebook Ceredigion Birds and Wildlife has posted a selection of finds: lobster, crab and crayfish on the strandline at Aberaeron.  I particularly note the Sponge Crab Dromia vulgaris.  This animal is covered in coconut-coloured hairs except where it bright pink pincers protrude, as if it were wearing nail varnish.  It picks up sea sponges to wear on the shell like a cloak, using a pair of specially modified hind legs to do so.  I had no idea this species was native to our coast  – I thought it belonged in the Mediterranean.  But then the sea has been getting warmer, as well as the storms more violent.

Melissa Lilley posted this picture of a Sponge Crab among the debris washed up on Aberaeron North Beach

The sheep had very little space to graze, but rustic seat on the Tanybwlch strand proved stronger than it looks.

It has been a week of total calm since Monday and the clear-up is ongoing.  Restoring our phone and internet has been a long job; both the fallen trees on our road took down the lines with a vengeance, but it was encouraging to find that by Tuesday several vans of Openreach  engineers were tackling the job.  Today is  Thursday and  Letter from Aberystwyth can reach the world.

And she’s gone!

Posted on by
1

by the Curious Scribbler

Clearly I was too pessimistic yesterday in my account of the dismembered Hot Toddy on the Tanybwlch shore.   Later that day the broken hull was indeed removed, and has been recorded on Facebook by Bethan Thomas.

Bethan Thomas’ photo – The Hull is removed!

And loaded onto a council lorry

Well done everybody involved and I guess the removal of the mast and metal parts was just the first part of the salvage operation.  It is so good to see this dramatic stony beach return to its pristine condition.   If only the permanent repair of the retaining wall between the bridge and the river could also be achieved before this winter’s storms remove yet more of the parking area by the stone jetty.

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

 

Ignominious end of the Hot Toddy

Posted on by
Reply

by the Curious Scribbler

I wrote in August about the two boats beached at Tanybwlch, the second of which remained un-rescued and acquired a council notice for its removal under the terms of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987.  It was no surprise that notwithstanding this enforcement notice the boat continued to sit stranded on the pebbles.  It was an old  fibreglass boat with its cabin closed off with a piece of hardboard and we speculated it had been abandoned.

The two boats beached in early August

On Monday it was still there, its mast clearly visible from the car park. But today things are different.  The shell of the hull is now in two pieces and fragments of fibreglass and other detritus litter the shore line for a considerable distance.  There has been a high tide and a good swell is rolling in, so the pieces have probably been knocked around a bit.  But the critical observation is that the aluminium mast, the rudder and keel  and much of the other metal work of the hull have disappeared.  It has been cut in two.

The fibreglass remains of the Hot Toddy

There is even a neat pile of less important metallic odds and ends sitting on the shore waiting to be collected. And an empty fuel can which probably powered the tools used to dismember the boat.

Small items of salvage left behind on the upper shore

I think that some opportunistic salvage, perhaps by moonlight, took place this week.  Certainly nothing of any scrap value remains.  The fibreglass hull is is a negative asset –  it would be very costly to recycle and would be treated as landfill waste. However its removal from the shore is even more pressing as the eroded fragments break down to release fibres damaging to all forms of filter-feeding marine life.

There is an urgent need for  a beach-clean to remove the many fragments already scattered along the upper shore.  I shall be happy to take part.  But the broken halves of the hull need professional disposal as soon as possible.

The wreckage of the Hot Toddy

Too many people view our rivers and seas as waste disposal units.  Only yesterday on facebook  several people also recorded three men dumping planks and other trade waste from a trailer into the Rheidol River in Penparcau.  There are some folk who don’t deserve a good night’s sleep.

Planks tossed into the river at Heol Tyn y Fron

The perpetrators’ load.

Hot Toddy on Tanybwlch Beach

Posted on by
1

There is a new piece of litter on the beach this month, a rather aged fibreglass yacht which lies stranded on the shingle at the north end of the beach.

The abandoned boat now wears a bilingual enforcement notice

I first saw it on 5 August, when not one but two boats had come ashore, the Hot Toddy and another boat  which was on the sand half way down the strand near the concrete barrier.  That second yacht has now been removed, while the Hot Toddy has today been pasted with a Council Notice.  Under Section 40 of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987 it will shortly be removed and disposed of unless the owner serves a counter notice and removes it themselves.

The Hot Toddy on tanybwlch beach

Passers-by gather to inspect it and exchange news.  I have been told that the second boat got in to difficulties trying to help the Hot Toddy and both ended up on the beach. Another source had heard that the Hot Toddy was sailed ( or motored) by a complete amateur with no sailing skills who had bought the old boat in Cardiff and was trying to sail it to Liverpool!  It certainly appears that the owner has not identified themselves, and has abandoned it.  I looked more closely at it today and met an experienced sailor who owns a similar boat  He told me that, unlike with cars, the registration of boats is voluntary and an old one such as this could be bought for £2000 or so.   The costs of disposing of it will probably exceed any scrap value.

Further down the beach I checked up on another piece of flotsam, the Tanybwlch dragon which I first wrote about in December 2019.  This heraldic-looking tree trunk has been moving around the beach ever since, ( it even disappeared for a while), its dragon head steadily eroding away as storms rolled it on the pebbles until the likeness was lost.  Now it has had its final come-uppance, its headless body incorporated into a beach bonfire,  and now burnt through to create two pieces of charred trunk.

Demise of the Tanybwlch Dragon

A copious amount of timber, trunks and branches, brought down river, washes up on the south end of this beach and is soon de-barked by the action of the sea.  I wonder who was the creative soul who came down with saw and screwdriver and fashioned  the fine rustic bench which looks out to sea from the stones where the Wheatears breed.

A driftwood bench overlooking Cardigan bay

The Tanybwlch bench

For a while there was also a driftwood arbour tied together with fishermens’ rope and twine, but this blew down and disappeared.  Always something new to look out for on my favorite beach.

It is to be hope though that along with the disposal of the Hot Toddy the Council’s attention with be focused on the continuing collapse of the retaining wall above the river where the cars park.  It is two years since a temporary repair was done with white bags full of rocks.  Most of these have now washed away and the winter storms will play havoc with the remaining structure.  If only the small hole which developed before during Storm Ciara in 2020 had been promptly filled with cement!

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

Needed – A conservation saviour for Tanycastell land

Posted on by
9

by The Curious Scribbler

Barely had I returned from the walk around Pendinas when the news emerged of the imminent sale of the magnificent meadow and marshland which abuts Tanybwlch beach.  For long this land had belonged to farmer Lewis Jones of Ynyshir and Tanycastell farms,  – a man with an unenviable reputation for livestock neglect – and limited enthusiasm for SSSIs.  Following his death a couple of years ago the most coastal part of Tanycastell farm has now been put on the market with estate agents Aled Ellis.

The area for sale is the stony barrier spit and three coastal fields south of the river Ystwyth and the steeply sloping meadow which clothes Alltwen cliff.  According to the particulars the 153 acres has a guide price of £1.4 million,  an average of £9150 an acre.   This seems a substantial sum.  Seventy seven acres is described as level pasture but the particulars omit to mention that part of it floods regularly and it is reverting below Tanybwlch mansion to salt marsh.  With rising sea levels it was already  resolved twenty years ago that the Tanyblwch flats cannot be protected from the sea.  A further  63 acres of Alltwen is described as sheepwalk.   This  perhaps overstates the case, for the land ownership extends to high tide mark so almost 1/3 of the Alltwen land area is cliff and tumbled former quarry inhospitable even to a mountain goat!

I worry deeply that this high price is not unconnected with the final words in the particulars:    The land will also be of interest to investors, statutory bodies and conservationists in additional to those who wish to develop a commercial enterprise (subject to planning) on the Southern fringes of Aberystwyth.

By a miracle Tanybwlch land has escaped a number of commercial enterprises. The previous owner was Col. Lewis Pugh who bought it in hope of installing Aberystwyth airport there, and on failing to secure the necessary investment sold it in the 1960s to Lewis Jones.    Some 35 years ago  I was one of the objectors who fought off the proposal to install a sewage maceration plant which would mince Aberystwyth’s sewage and discharge it, still rich in microbes, a little further out to sea. ( Thankfully a state of the art  treatment plant was instead built on the Rheidol Industrial estate, and our sea is the better for it).

But what commercial horrors might now threaten this beautiful piece of land?  We must hope that our planning authority would be equal to the task of fending off development.   This is a piece of land which richly deserves a conservationist owner.  The Alltwen and Traeth Tanybwlch SSSI  (Site of Special Scientific Interest) represents the rare and specialist coastal flora of the shingle beach.  Sea holly, sea sandwort, restharrow and horned poppy are among the most conspicuous of an elite flora and Ray’s knotgrass one of the rarest. The sheepwalk above is one of the finest locations for waxcaps and the remarkable Devil’s Fingers  fungi in the county.  Wheatear and rock pipit nest on the stony shore, and choughs, peregrines and  ravens frequent the cliffs.

As climate changes it is becoming even more diverse.  With rising seas and fiercer storms the south west corner at the foot of Alltwen now forms a shallow lagoon for long periods of the winter, and the pool is visited by teal, widgeon, mallard, redshank, curlew, lapwing, heron, little egret and migrating geese.  The vegetation is already changing to saltmarsh, and if the land drains were blocked, a marsh as important as the Dyfi will soon develop.  One day the shingle spit may be entirely breached and the river Ystwyth may resume an earlier course towards the sea.

Flooding of Tanybwlch flats after Storm Dennis in 2020

The sea deposited loads of sand over the shingle bar and into the fields February 2022

All this nature and beauty on the very doorstep of Aberystwyth is a magnificent asset and with a more specific designation could bring yet more visitors to the town.  Lying between Pendinas, the finest hillfort in the county and the wooded slopes of the original Aberystwyth Castle, and skirted by the Welsh Coastal Path,  these fields are an incomparably important part of the scenery and must be protected.    A conservation saviour is urgently required.

Alltwen cliff   May 2020.  In autumn and winter the slope is rich with fungi

Scenes like this one during Storm Dennis  in February 2020 will much reduce its viability as farmland

The permanent lagoon which tries to form each winter  would  further enhance the area. 

Tanybwlch Beach in the next decade?

Posted on by
3

by The Curious Scribbler,

There are few places more beautiful than Tanybwlch beach on a fine spring day like today. It is pristine, almost empty, wild and picturesque. It also has an ancient resonance, for more than a thousand years (about 800BC to 1200 AD) the people of the  Pendinas hillfort will have foraged along this shore.

Alltwen at the south of Tanybwlch Beach

 

At the south end below Alltwen the wheatears are back, preparing to nest in the holes amongst the tumbled stones which form the bank.  Small parties of swallows hawk northwards following the shore line, still on their way to their summer homes.  Parties of linnets pause chattering on the wire fence and the indefatigable chiffchaffs shout ceaselessly in the wood beyond.    The thrift and sea campion are in bloom.

Sea Campion

This is  a place dear to the hearts of many local people, beloved of dog walkers and naturalists alike.  It has taken the brunt of ferocious storms and rising sea level which have, in the last few years caused  drastic changes in the shape of the strand.  The Tanycastell field below Alltwen  has long tended to become a shallow lake during winter time but is now well on the way to becoming salt marsh.  Here the waves don’t so much wash over as percolate through the pebble bank and the species composition of  grasses and sedges in the field is changing to a salt-tolerant flora.

Along the sandy middle section of the strand the  shore is eaten back every year now, and much of the stabilizing vegetation on the sloping sand bank facing the sea has been washed away.  The most recent rock sea defences, big stones placed to break the waves, now lie irrelevant yards down the beach.

The concrete barrage half way along is no longer passable to vehicles.  Near here the sea floods over with  great force carrying big cobbles off the beach and depositing them in the river Ystwyth beyond.  The riverside path is disappearing in several places.

Pebbles spill over into the Ystwyth river

But the greatest threat to public enjoyment is the erosion in the car park.  Three years ago during Storm Ciara a small hole opened up allowing storm water to drain through rather than over the hard standing behind the tall buttressing wall which extends from the bridge.  Sadly it was not blocked with concrete right away.

In February 2020 Storm Ciara excavated the first sink hole.

Some security fencing was erected around it and nothing was done. During lockdown and beyond, it grew and grew, and the original fencing collapsed into the hole.  Wider and wider areas have been fenced off as the tall wall continues to collapse.   And the potholes where cars enter the car park have now deepened so far that soon it will be impassable to all but all-terrain vehicles.

The retaining wall supporting the car park undergoing collapse

A huge void has been excavated by successive storms

If the car park is lost the nature reserve will benefit.  With lesser footfall we may get more breeding birds, like the common sandpipers I saw today which seemed to be hoping to establish a territory close to  the bridge, and eager to lead me away.  Otters, kingfishers and goosanders already frequent this part of the river.   As long as the bridge remains, walkers will be able to follow the coastal path but without a car park public usage will change.

A new hole has recently appeared and is currently garnered with a red plastic fence..  The water which has rushed down this sinkhole has already excavated the mortar from another stretch of the riverside wall.  The rate of collapse shows no sign of slowing down. Will the future of Tanybwlch Nature Reserve be determined purposely or by neglect?

Who cares?  and indeed which agencies are responsible for this wall?

The new hole. Tanybwlch

Masonry has  already been eroded by water gushing through the new hole

 

 

 

Cleaning up the Promenade

Posted on by
Reply

by The Curious Scribbler

Yesterday’s balmy sunshine illuminated a scene of great activity on the promenade, as diggers and scrapers collected up huge piles of sea sand and returned them to the beach.  This was not like the pebbles and rubble aftermath of a heavy storm such as we have see so many winters.  Instead the beach seems to have gently migrated up and over the sloping paving of the prom.  From time to time over  the winter a path has been swept through it for the benefit of walkers and buggies but the highest tides have repeatedly augmented and redistributed the sandy covering.

March 27th was the big clean up on the promenade

When I was there, the area north of the Prom Diner had yet to be tackled, the sandy foreshore dimpled by a thousand footfalls reached right up to the planters full of cheerful daffodils.

I do not know whether there are local measurements for sea level here, but the global estimate is that it has risen by 3 inches, (8cms) since the year 2000.  As global warming advances and more and more ice melts it will surely rise further.  It looks as if regular high tides rather than severe storms are playing the greatest part in the migration of the beach onto our promenade.  Sweeping sand off the prom may become an increasing task in the coming years.

Storm Barra rips up the promenade again

Posted on by
4

by The Curious Scribbler

I’ve written about at least seven storms in the lifetime of this blog, but here we go again!  Storm Barra has devastated the prom, and perhaps most evocative has been a video posted on Facebook by Clare Jonsson.  Viewed from an upstairs window overlooking the area in front of the Marine Hotel we see huge waves breaking over the parked cars which bleat plaintively at each blow, their alarm lights flashing as they are inexorably shunted across the road and deposited at the inland side.  One shudders for the owners, who presumably overlooked the weather forecasts on Tuesday afternoon.

Cars scattered by the sea, photographed on Wednesday morning.  Posted on Facebook by Aberystwyth Town Centre and Justin Carroll

Many people’s thoughts turned to the homeless man who customarily sleeps on the landward side of the Victorian shelter on the prom.  Apparently a kindly neighbour Kash Smith took him into her flat and rescued some, but not all of his possessions.  Other items including his mattress  could be seen on the bench in a turmoil of backwash while daylight shows that the southern end of the shelter has been broken through, its long bench stranded on the paving.

Posted on Facebook by Aberystwyth Town Centre and Justin Carroll

The shelter, which is a Cadw listed structure, was meticulously restored in 2014 after the January storm ripped it apart and a huge hole, remnant of the earlier bathhouse on the site, opened up beneath it. It survived Storm Frank in 2015 and Storm Ophelia in 2017 , Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis in 2020 and the many lesser storms which brought loads of sand up onto the prom.    But last night’s damage is far more reminiscent of the storm of 3 January 2014.  Big sill stones at the edge of the prom have been lifted up and slid across the paving, and large tracts of smaller slabs behind them have been lifted away.  Flower beds have been demolished.  Once again a big clear up will be needed.

Posted on Facebook by Aberystwyth Town Centre and Justin Carroll

 

Photo by Anthony Elvy

Posted on Facebook by Aberystwyth Town Centre and Justin Carroll

I have yet to visit my other favourite haunt, Tanybwlch Beach, to see what changes have been wrought by Storm Barra.  The huge retaining wall on the river side of the car park has been dangling dangerously since Storm Ciara hit on 9 February 2020, creating a great void behind it which has been roughly covered with fencing material, but growing larger ever since.

The hole which opened up during Storm Ciara and has been growing ever since

And each year recently the sea has managed to breach over the shingle bank towards the southern end and flood the low lying fields below the mansion. As sea levels rise this area of farmland, former site of the Aberystwyth Show and once the prospective Aberystwyth Airport is likely to revert to permanent marshland.

The sea poured over the Tanybwlch shingle strand during Storm Dennis

Storm Dennis flooded the Tanybwlch flats 16 February 2020

 

Five new swallows

Posted on by
3

By The Curious Scribbler

Every year we have swallows, who build their nest just outside the kitchen door where their poo piles up inconveniently on the mat, a hazard for the unwary.  Their arrival is nonetheless eagerly welcomed, and their breeding success a matter of note.  Last year there was a tragedy.  The whole clutch died, fully fledged in the nest.  I believe this was because of two days, 25 to 26 August, in which we were continuously buffetted by ferocious gales.   I was reminded of this only yesterday when a news item about climate change included a scene of huge waves battering the seafront below Alexandra Hall.

The Aberystwyth storm of 25 August 2020

The sea breaking over Aberystwyth Jetty on 25 August 2020

Neither swallows nor insects could fly in that howling gale and I think the chicks simply perished unfed.  We wondered whether they had flown before the storm, but a couple of weeks later I inspected the nest to find four dead swallows, their tails still a little on the short side, but otherwise perfect.  The parents hung around on the electricity wires for some days, but then departed.

This spring was also unusual.  During the early spell of warm, fine weather one or two swallows appeared, scoping the house, even indulging in occasional aerial squabbles, but nothing came of it and and the nest remained unused.  They knew best perhaps,  for  that fine spell brought on all the shrubs in the garden, only to be scorched off by frost a few weeks later. There followed a May marked by its coldness and wetness, – not good conditions for feeding young. They were wise to wait.

I had pretty much given up hope when, in June, a swallow appeared, and sat singing its burbling chirrup on the wire, and before long was joined by a mate.  They patched up the old nest, and devoted their spare time to intimidating the cats by their dive bombing.   At first the chicks were pretty quiet, just a whisper of begging when the adult birds returned with beaks full of tiny insects, but over three weeks their cries become a loud cacophony breaking out almost every minute as the parents swooped in with food.  The droppings began to pile up on the mat beneath.

The hungry swallow provides an irresistible target for its harassed parent.

And on the 23 July they flew at dawn.  I woke to find them balancing precariously on the wire outside my window, and fluttering effortfully back to the roof.  By 10 am they were all back in their nest.

The exercise programme for a young swallow seems carefully calibrated by the parents.  For the rest of the day the feeding continued unabated, but the next morning the chicks were out again, for longer, tackling more demanding routes under the car port and lining up on different perches to beg for food. After a week they were out all day, and nowhere to be seen,  but would suddenly swoop down in mid afternoon, a twittering gang of five, and return to their nest on the beam, where their parents continued to feed them till dusk.

The five Swallow chicks return to the nest at bedtime

It is now day 9 since they first flew, and every evening we look out the back door to check that the five youngsters, still sporting their yellow flanges to their gape, are lined up for the night.  It wont be long now before they leave us, and I wonder whether their parents will fit in another brood before Africa beckons once more.  They sometimes do.

 

I love a storm!

Posted on by
1

by The Curious Scribbler

Rain last night has further swollen the rivers, and now we have wind! Exhilarating buffeting winds from the west, gusting almost hard enough to knock you over!  60 miles an hour or so I’m told.  So my place of choice is Tanybwlch, where the Ystwyth debouches into the sea.  It is murky and brown with fresh run off, and further swollen in the tidal reach because the tide is obstructing its outward flow.

High seas back up the Ystwyth river

Mist from the breakers hangs over the Tanycastell fields and the riverside path is flooded in parts.

The concrete jetty largely protects the harbour mouth, though the swell still forms regular brown rollers creeping along its leeward side.

The stone jetty protects the harbour from the south westerlies but some waves roll in

But to position yourself on the windward side on the top of the shore provides an endless spectacle, as waves break in curious explosive shapes over the green and white harbour marker, sometimes obscuring it from view, and the backwash forms swirling wave patterns in the angle between the beach and the shore.  It is easy to see how the huge stones at this end of the beach get their smooth contours.  The sea acts like a giant pebble-polishing device.

Waves breaking over the stone jetty

The town is a little tamer than Tanybwlch, but still dramatic.  At 4pm the clouds were so dark that the streetlights on the prom were glimmering into light.

The Promenade takes a battering

Unwary promenaders could get splashed by the waves curling up against the sea wall and showering spray and small pieces of gravel.  As the waves pull back the perfect profile of the sandy beach is briefly exposed.

Sand is smoothed out as the big waves flow back into the sea

The full force of the open sea is greatest at Alexandra Hall but this was a summer storm, not one of the ferocious winter ones which sometimes hurl stones at the windows of that forbidding building.  The door was open and without barricades.  Students will soon be moving in again. There were a few walkers kicking the bar, and beyond it the small piece of sandy beach below Constitution Hill was white with blown sea foam.

The north end of the beach

I came home to wash the sea salt out of my hair, much invigorated by the wind and waves.