Surfladle

This News Item has nothing directly to do with our sports, but the location does...

We received these pictures from Julian Taylor last Friday and they show that Pagham is in big trouble again after just one week of Autumn Storms (Julian and  Elaine sent us pictures back in May. Click Here to see ). The erosion is incredible as the beach in recent years would have seen the western end bungalows at least 100m from the edge of the shingle spit, but now it must be only 10m ! Your thoughts have to go out to the owners of the properties as it's an awful position to be in (you can see a For Sale sign in one of the pics..). Maybe position wasnt the best word to use but how else do you describe it.

Shoreham is the same sort of shingle spit as Pagham, but I guess that maybe our position to the sea, which is more south facing than Pagham, along with the harbour arms controlling the river outlet makes the long shore drift not quite so damaging. Most of the people we have talked to about it (who I have to say have no proffesional knowledge of the problem) think that the Enviroment Agency should breach the spit in front of the Pagham Harbour outlet and then extend the mouth out to the spit with more rocks and shingle or steel plates to make a new outlet which would return it to how it was twenty or so years back (harbour arms would probably be seen as too expensive) but does anyone know if this would work, and if not, why not? If you do have an answer to that queation please email it to  mail@surfladle.co.uk  or drop by and tell us.

Many thanks to Julian Taylor for sending the pics and we wish all of the residents of Pagham Beach a bit of godly intervention, as I guess that is all they can hope for.

Larger versions of the pictures are also on our Gallery