Wave power

Abermawr Bay on the furthest western coast of Pembrokeshire is an empty, elemental place on a clear winter's day.  To sit on the shingle bank here and watch the waves  roar in, pound the shore and suck back, over and over again, is to wonder yet again why we don't harvest the massive energy contained in these forces.

Of course it would mean change and transformation and if it were to happen here we would have to surrender the pristine beauty of the place  for intrusive technology in the hope of achieving sustainable, clean,  non-nuclear energy. Personally I think it is the only option we have,  if there is still time to shift our trajectory from its current direction as we burn up our non-renewable, dirty energy sources.

The sea and the coasts are not static.This very place has changed over the course of time in a way it is hard to imagine. Where the waves roll in was once a wooded valley engulfed by the sea 6000 years ago, when as the last Ice Age ended, the sea level rose (as it is predicted to do again in our warming global climate). The land extended about a mile further out and at the lowest tides it's possible to see  dark brown hummocks of  a soft chocolaty material that was once tree roots.

The erosion has continued ever since.  To my left are the remains of two grassy tracks that once led down to the shore but now end abruptly in a sandy cliff high above the beach. Each year a little more land is licked away by the waves.

The great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel reconnoitred this bay as the putative terminus for his long-distance  railway line. Traces of his initial workings remain in the woods behind. As it happened he was unable to bring the line through the rocky Treffgarne gorge a few miles further south so he veered around and took the track to the sea at Milford Haven instead. The town and docks that grew up there in the late 19th century  could have been here instead and what a different prospect this would be.

These are always the thoughts that fill my mind when I come to this place along with nostalgia for the many family holidays that we had close by, before we came to live here.