What the sea taketh away...

The recent weather system known as the "Beast from the East" not only turned our house into a freezer (it stands up above most of Scarborough and was directly exposed to the strong, and very cold, east wind) but also scoured enormous amounts of sand off of both of the town's beaches.

Freshly exposed rocks in the North Bay

No slippy algae on this one

This part of the coast has always been subject to a phenomenon known as longshore drift where sand is picked up by the sea and tends to drift towards the south. The end result of all this is Spurn Point, a long spit of sand at the mouth of the Humber. 

Spurn Point

Of course we'd rather that our beaches didn't just disappear but we're used to the fact that they keep on changing and when I went out for a walk yesterday I became confident that at least some of the sand would soon be back, and the uncovered stones would once again snuggle back under their sandy blanket.

Random dog playing in the turbid water

Sometimes the waves coming in are white, bright and frothy. At others, like this, they're brown and murky. The sand is on it's way back...