On Chesil Beach

On Saturday afternoon Tony and I went for a walk along Chesil Bank. The shape of it has certainly been altered by the violent storms in January; before then, the pebbles formed a succession of low ridges or terraces. Now wind and wave have flung them back into a steep slope, with, on the other side, a longer, gentler descent towards the village. The elements have picked up thousands of tons of stones and reshaped them like a toddler in a sandpit.

So the recent storms have reconfigured the shingle. But that has happened many times before, and will happen many times again. There will be visual impacts that remain. But in a couple of weeks, the structure of the beach will have changed again. Chesil is constantly rebuilding itself. It is a dynamic, permeable system – more of an ever-changing creature than a stick of rock.