Tanybwlch Beach in the next decade?

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Curious Scribbler

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 March 28, 2023 by Curious Scribbler

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 December 8, 2021 by Curious Scribbler

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 July 31, 2021 by Curious Scribbler

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 August 25, 2020 by Curious Scribbler

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.

Dragon on the move

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Curious Scribbler

by the Curious Scribbler

The Tanybwlch Dragon has moved several hundred yards along the beach during last Saturday’s high seas. Once again it has beached itself gazing out to sea, its lower jaw a little more abraded, but its eager expression is now almost as convincing from the left flank as from the right.

Right cheek

Left cheek

Seas have been breaking over the stony strand which separates the beach from the low lying Tanybwlch flats, the location of summer trotting races, and formerly, of the Aberystwyth Show. Once more a huge pool has formed below Alltwen, beloved of gulls and waders.

The brackish pool on Tanybwlch flats

Over the years there have been a number of efforts to drain this area and return it to pasture, but this seems to be a losing battle and each winter the lake forms again, and as it drains away rushes prosper at the expense of grass. It is highly likely that we will see the day when the sea breaks through the pebble bar and our walks along this wild beach will be curtailed part way along.

The Dragon has migrated along Tanybwlch beach

The strand line was not as free from human debris as when I commented two weeks ago, but as with the comments from my reader about the Gower, fragments of netting and other fisherman’s waste were far more abundant than household plastic. The white lumps on the strand line were not polystyrene but cuttlefish bone, and the fluffy froth just natural sea spume.

Cuttlefish on the strandline at Tanybwlch beach

A Dragon on Tanybwlch beach

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Curious Scribbler

By The Curious Scribbler

There is a new arrival on Tanybwlch beach, remarkably in the shape of a dragon, looking out to sea.

Dragon’s head likeness

A large tree trunk, felicitously worn by the abrasive boulders has beached itself high on the shore near the south end of the beach during a recent storm, and presented itself to best advantage in this weekend’s winter sunshine.

Tree trunk at Tanybwlch beach

Walking the strand line, I was also impressed by the scarcity of plastic waste. I wonder whether this is entirely down to the dedicated beach cleaners who regularly patrol our beaches, or whether, (dare one hope?) the rate at which rubbish is discarded into the Irish sea is at last diminishing.

I used to beach clean here regularly a decade ago when we recorded all the items for the Marine Conservation Society records. In those days one did not go far to fill a sack with single-use plastic and hard plastic crates and bits of rope. Yesterday there were a few bottle tops and fragments of plastic amongst the dried wrack, but the waste was predominantly what it should be: biodegradable seaweed and sticks washed down the rivers in the recent rains.

Driftwood on the strandline

How much easier on the eye than a strandline of coloured waste. Aberstwyth Beach Buddies and Surfers against Sewage are to be congratulated for their action and campaigning, but so too is everyone who now chooses not to chuck their rubbish into the sea in the first place! I remember standing on a cross channel ferry in the 1970s and watching aghast as a kitchen hand emerged on the deck below and tipped all the ferry’s catering packaging off the stern to bob away in our wake. I have no doubt he was following orders. Fifty years later the public all have camera phones and I don’t think many companies would risk being observed.

Driftwood on the strandline at Tanybwlch beach

Storm Ophelia

Posted on October 17, 2017 by Curious Scribbler

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. The stone jetty north of Tanybwlch beach

by The Curious Scribbler

There are few more invigorating spots than Tanybwlch beach during a powerful storm. There is the rattling cascade of huge pebbles sucked back and hurled again against the shore, the huge grey brown rollers trailing spume, and the explosive crash of the waves against the concrete jetty which protects the harbour from the south.

At high tide yesterday, at 5.30pm Ophelia was at its height, and the huge waves broke relentlessly along its length, an unbroken sheet of foamy water flowing across the jetty and cascading into relative calm on the other side. Even more spectacular was the backwash where a huge wave rebounding from the jetty side would travel southward until it collided with the next huge roller coming in. Then an explosion of disordered water flies high into the grey sky.

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Water streams over the stone jetty

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Waves collide as they rebound from the stone jetty

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Another wave rebounds against a new one

Meanwhile high tide held back the outflow of the Ystwyth, ( which is tidal until the corner where Nanny Goats Walk sets off inland) and the water backed up to flood the grass and lower path along the riverside. Standing on the Pen-yr-anchor bridge the gale hit one with ferocious force, coming directly along the overflowing river, rippled to wavelets by the wind.

Storm Ophelia. The Ystwyth river backs up at high tide

Further south along the curving storm beach the waves rush up, loaded with sand and pebbles, and pour over into the Ystwyth river behind it. Little wonder that the Tanybwlch flats have not been earmarked for further sea defences by the Environment Agency (now NRW). At the foot of Alltwen the pasture is returning, not for the first time, to salt marsh and standing water.

There were a dozen or more of us, and several dogs on the top of the strand, teetering in the gusts and watching, filming or photographing the scene. The green and white pillar on the end regularly disappeared from view. Incautious cars could be seen driving out onto the wooden jetty on the far side of the harbour, spray suddenly engulfing them, and a small blue and white motor boat, tethered to the jetty listed and slowly sank under the onslaught.

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Waves break over the stone jetty

I then went to the main Aberystwyth promenade, where the full force of the south wind was less, but the waves crashed satisfyingly on the sea wall, sending a sheet of sand and water over the prom. Spectacular explosions of spray engulfed the public shelter on Bath rocks, which was only recently restored after an even more severe pummeling by Storm Frank in 2014.

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Spray engulfs the Victorian Shelter

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth, water streams over the prom

Further north the waves shot directly skyward in front of Alexandra Hall. I have seen them burst higher in other storms, but there is a little buttress on the promenade near there which always attracts the dare devils waiting to run back from a soaking from the even more exceptional wave.

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Taking selfies in the storm

It was a bit of a party atmosphere all along the prom, as people walked, dodged the overflowing waves and took photos on their phones. A person in a motility scooter bowled gaily along the prom with a following wind behind it. I would have been a bit fearful in so light a vehicle with the wind resistance of its hood. These are the circumstances when buggies and prams readily escape their owners.

If there is one species entirely unimpressed by the 70mph gusts it is the starling. Autumn is setting in and the big traditional roost is filling up under the Pier. Without any apparent difficulty the flocks cruised in at dusk, jinking in perfect synchrony to form strands and ovoids in the sky before diving down to roost on the ironwork under the deck. They came in smaller groups of one to two hundred birds, and perhaps dived to safety sooner than on a calm evening. But while few gulls flew in the wild winds, these little birds carried on as if the evening was entirely unremarkable.

Storm Ophelia Aberystwyth. Huge waves approach north beach

Storm Frank

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Curious Scribbler

Not a lot of time for blogging during a family Christmas, but I managed to get almost all the guests out of the house at high tide this morning to enjoy the spectacle of Storm Frank. Not as destructive as the un-named storm which devastated the prom two years ago, but impressive none the less.

The Aberystwyth seafront on 30 December 2015

Huge waves break on the bath rocks

The Aberytswyth seafront on 30 December 2015

The Aberystwyth seafront on 30 December 2015

We also went to the harbour, where great bursts of water shot up into the air, and flooded across the breakwater.

Aberystwyth harbour

Lastly to my favourite haunt, Tanybwlch beach, where the suction of the huge waves grinds and stacks up the dark cobbles on the strand. Water broke over the whole length of the jetty and streaming in an unbroken sheet over its surface.

Tanybwlch beach pounded by Storm Frank

So unlike the idyllic waves of Christmas Day.

Tanybwlch beach on Christmas day

Aberystwyth’s Bathrock Shelter resurrected

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Curious Scribbler

Pristine and restored, the Bathrocks shelter

Pristine and restored, the Bathrock shelter on a chilly afternoon, 21 August 2014

Back in its rightful place, after the terrible drubbing during the storm of 3-6 January, is the neo-Georgian shelter on the Aberystwyth Promenade. It was publicly reopened last Saturday with the mayor, the Chairman of the County Council, the MP and other dignitaries in attendance. It is salutory to remember that the Cadw listing recently bestowed on the building probably saved its life. There were until three years ago two such shelters on the promenade, the smaller of which was demolished and removed in January 2011. The surviving Bathrock Shelter was listed Grade II shortly afterwards.

The name of the shelter ‘Bathrock’ alludes to a former building in this position: Dr Rice William’s Marine Baths which were built in 1810. At the time they were the most northerly feature on the sea front, a two storey building providing Aberystwyth’s visitors with the curative benefits of sea water served in a variety of ways in a situation of complete privacy. Each private room provided a bath ‘six feet long and two and a half wide, lined with Dutch tile, which being much less porous than marble, is more effectually cleansed from all impurities to which they are liable’. Baths could be taken cold or hot, and in the form of a plunge bath, a vapour bath or a shower. Boilers heated the water, and the visitors could be further assured that the water was drawn along cast iron pipes reaching far out into the bay. The spectre of inshore pollution from other bathers, or the donkeys pulling bathing huts, could thereby be avoided.

The baths eventually closed in 1892. Bathing was still in vogue but by this time for those requiring an indoor experience, there was a new bath house on Bath Street, which instead boasted the Chalybeate waters of a nearby spring, while at the Queen’s Hotel on the promenade the guests enjoyed taps dispensing, hot water, cold water and sea water into their baths. The promenade was being extended in a northerly direction, and the remains of the old marine baths were incorporated into it, roughly filled, it seems, with rubble from the demolition. In 1924 a new shelter, glazed down its spine and providing seating facing in each direction, was erected on the curved prominence above bath rocks.

The remains of the old bath house was unexpectedly revealed to view when the winter storm tore away the stone facing of the promenade. The sea soon excavated a hole through which the rubble fill was sucked away exposing a sea cave beneath the shelter. It was a man-made cave, with walls, partitions and even a fireplace. As the concrete pad on which the shelter stands collapsed into the void, the building flexed, twisted and subsided into the hole. Police stood by to prevent incautious exploration, and in the following weeks the damaged structure was dismantled and stored pending restoration.

By January 7th 2014 the Bathrock Shelter was subsiding into the hole below

On January 7th 2014 the Bathrock Shelter was subsiding into the hole below

The Hole which opened under the Bathrock Shelter on 4 January 2014

The partitions of the rooms of the old bathhouse could be clearly seen.

The shelter is the last item in a programme of repair of the promenade which was in the main completed before the season began at Easter. In the blazing days of July, when temperatures often exceeded those in Spain, and the sea temperature reached a balmy 17C the old timbers of the restored and replaced shelter was await their first coat of paint.

On 6 July 2014 the shelter was back, but yet to be painted.

Now the weather has turned grey and cold, and in the coming winter it will be particularly appreciated as a windbreak on the bracing seafront.

Necessary shelter on a chilly afternoon. 21 August 2014

Letter from Aberystwyth

Thirty years ago I came over the Cambrian mountains. I am still learning about this place.

Tag Archives: storm

Tanybwlch Beach in the next decade?

Cleaning up the Promenade

Storm Barra rips up the promenade again

Five new swallows

I love a storm!

Dragon on the move

A Dragon on Tanybwlch beach

Storm Ophelia

Storm Frank

Aberystwyth’s Bathrock Shelter resurrected

Follow Letter from Aberystwyth