Saturday 23 May 2009

King Canute of Camber

You may have heard of the (mythical?) story of King Canute (or Cnut), who had his throne set on the beach and commanded the tide to stop where it was - he got wet. Well, we have a similar thing going on in Camber. Between the village and the sea are large sand dunes, which keep the sea out but are also hard work to walk over. Because the beach is popular, the council uses diggers to clear sand out of the paths over the dunes:
The only problem is that as soon as they've done it, the wind picks up and literally within 24-48 hours the sand is all back where it started! You can see the wind carrying it over the dunes here (that's not mist, it's airborne sand):
So they expend lots of money and fossil fuels moving the the sand back onto the beach, and the wind moves it back onto the dunes for free! Isn't nature great, and people stupid?

Mike

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