Rinse and repeat

 

The volume and force of the water coming off the plains at times is evident in the erosion it's causing as it races to join the forests' rivers. I've seen dozens of incidences like the damage above, where rushing water has scoured away sections of the gravel forestry track. Whilst many of the forests' green tracks are hardly navigable having become so sodden, easily churned. The forest makes for interesting walking.

Bratley Arch

Bratley Water is one of the upper tributaries of the Lymington River, here at Bratley Arch it's still young having only formed a mile or so north in Slufters Bottom. The Slufters Bottom catchment area is a finger of broad valley sticking into Ocknell Plain, and when it rains heavily the run off causes the the valley bottom flood and the waters surge. Through Bratley Bottom these surges create multiple narrow competing channels through the trees and carr, each cutting through the underlying clays and exposing the tangled roots of trees as they go. As the waters recede first two then one channel will survive, the others will wait their time to be or their time has been and they'll begin to fill. The valley bottom is scared all over by centuries of these transient waterways. 

Becton Bunny

Just beyond Barton on Sea, on the New Forest coast is Becton Bunny (bunny being the local name for a chine), a narrow valley carrying a small stream of the same name towards the sea.  The bit that people really know as the bunny though is the 400m before the sea, where as steep sided ravine it opens through the sandy cliffs. This section runs obliquely to the cliff creating a rather thin promontory, and the sandy/gravelly nature of the geology here makes that promontory susceptible to weathering. And, man, has it weathered in recent years. Coastal erosion has really taken it's toll, and once that promontory has gone I don't think the bunny will be a feature, or a feature of any substance, here for many more decades (the average rate at which the cliff retreats along this section of coastline is 1m per year); it'll become merely a scoop in the cliff line (like the nearby Taddiford Gap) and hollow in the coastline. Maybe then the stream will reach the beach as a waterfall, though maybe that'd cut a new ravine over time...time will tell. The stream itself isn't that long, maybe a mile and a half or so, originating just below New Milton. It's a nice spot.

Resistance is futile

The cliffs below Barton look like a battleground, all disturbed soil, exposed pipework, twisted and broken steel sheet pile. What your looking at is a war as old as us, a war waged between man and nature, and a war we're most definitely going to lose. The geology along this stretch of the coast lends itself to slippage, it's all marine clays and sands, topped with gravels, lateral slippage is inevitable. By the 1960's erosion was increasingly threatening/destroying property, and a massive civil engineering project was undertaken to stabilize the cliffs.  It never really worked. Well, it did to a degree, though slippages still occurred, they were less severe. A sort of temporary stalemate was achieved. That changed at the beginning of this century as over a few years the cliffs saw a number of destructive landslides and creeping slippages. It's appeared relatively quiet over the past few years, relatively. I often wonder when traversing this chaotic landscape, what the plan will be when the cliffs start moving with purpose again. Because they will. Same old battle? Or will we concede to the inevitable and retreat from the cliff top. 

The Long Groyne

King Canute understood, both literally and figuratively, and he tried to explain it to folk. Sadly though, nearly a thousand years on we still haven't understood our limits or our place in mother natures scheme. We'd make life much easier for ourselves, and her, if we did. So much wasted effort.

Slip sliding away

The cliffs at Hordle are moving so fast that you can almost hear them moving, in fact frequently you can actually hear and see them moving, as randomly a section of the upper gravels cascade towards the sea, like pennies falling from the 'push the penny' arcade game.  Whilst the cliff base bulges as the viscus layers of ancient marine clays slump into the waves under the weight above them. They've had to move the fence line back a few meters for a new path, as the path has disappeared in some sections. I reckon up to 1.5m to 2m has gone down in the last couple of years. I've seen whole archaeological features disappear in my time walking this path, just beyond this point only one of the many gun platforms which made up a gunnery school range remains in situ, and that only tentatively. The majority of the platforms a strewn across the cliff side or disappearing into the sea. A little way further again there was a line of World War 2 ATO's, Anti Tank Obstacles blocking Taddford Gap, a short valley which accesses the beach, have, all but for a couple displaced in the intertidal, gone. There's nothing to be done. Back a ways major coastal protection works have succumbed to natures desire for change, and even as they're replaced, you know it's an exercise in desperate Cnutism. You wont win again nature, and that's humanities biggest mistake, trying to flout nature rather than working with her. 

Slip sliding away

As the recent past slips from memory, so its physical remnants slip too.  These humble concrete slabs, passed by many daily, mostly ignored, their pasts on the whole unknown, are slowly making their way down the cliff side, sinking through the beach pebbles to disappear under the waves into oblivion. I understand that during World War 2 there was a gunnery range here, if you look, on some of the slabs you can see where the gun mounts were. And, occasionally I've even found badly decayed .303 cases on the lower sections of cliff. Though soon nothing will be left to see, nothing to prick the imagination and then the site will be gone, erased from the archaeological record and memory.  It makes me wonder how many other sites have gone this way over the centuries; more than you'd think, I'd imagine. 

Water level

It's been a dry winter really, the ground is wet, yes, but not sodden, and the streams, the streams, other than the occasional overflow, have stayed firmly within their banks. In fact, on the whole, the streams have shown gravel for months now.  I know that such things can, and will, fluctuate, although you can't help wondering if what we're seeing is a more permanent shift to cycles of more extreme episodes as a consequence of climate change kicking in.  Extended periods of dry, punctuated by episodes, long and short, of inundation and flooding; it's these extremes butting up against each other which create the right condition for environmental degradation and erosion. In recent years the number of trees slighted by the combination of adverse environmental conditions have soared, and the number of stream side trees undermined and now laying prostrate across the streams has increased too. The wooded parts of the forest look battered. Still, it's a lovely day and following Highland Water above Millyford Bridge, along some of its upper stretches, the forest stirs. The Sun has broken through, giving a sense of approaching spring, and it feels good.

Scars

They say weather's coming. The weather prophets tell us it's going to be bad. Whether it will or not has to be seen; I feel the weather people don't want to get caught out again, as they have in the past, and tend to overplay rather than under. Anyway, it came to mind whilst walking along the base of the cliffs at Steamer Point, where last years torrential rains had brought about some major slippages. The scars of the slippages are still mostly bare, exposed with little flora yet colonizing them. More storms, with more rains, will ensure these scars stay open, and continue to make it hard for any plants to get a foot hold and stabilize the slide. so more cliff will go.