Life Plus 2M
Entry by: quietmandave
1st September 2016
When my family moved into this house, the previous owner jokingly said that 'this is where the coast used to be', then seeing my amazement quickly added 'before the last ice age, of course'. The house was a beautiful stone construction, at least a hundred years old and built to withstand the bitterly cold winds of East Yorkshire for at least another five hundred. I chose the bedroom at the top of the house with the view eastwards towards the North Sea.
As a studious sixteen year old, I immediately searched for local books, and discovered that the entire plain to the east was formed from glacial deposits as the ice retreated after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago. That is why the land is so fertile, and so flat, a continuous stretch of farmland. Twelve miles of flat, open, boulder clay until you reach the sea. In the past ten thousand years the coast had retreated by twelve miles. In another ten thousand years it would reach our house. That seemed a huge safety margin.
I made a friend, and we would cycle to the coast and wander along the beaches, watching month by month the road slipping down the small cliffs onto the beach, then slowly disappearing into the sea. Four hundred metres inland stood my perfect house, a large bay windowed Victorian structure, with roses of every colour in the front garden, and a perfect lawn to the rear. We would climb onto the garden wall and make plans as to how we would lay out the formal garden, which vegetables we would grow. When I was twenty five, having returned from university, my friend and I went every day to stand and stare as the large house was consumed, room by room, by the incoming tide. There was a violent storm which lasted for two days, at the end of which there was no trace of the building as it had been. Two weeks later, the furthermost garden wall tumbled down, welcomed by the incoming sea. The house that was built to last several lifetimes was but a pile of rubble strewn across the beach. Over time the building materials were scavenged.
The first time I realised how great an issue was facing us was when the power station became an island. Always heavily fortified against the incoming sea, concrete the solution to coastal erosion, I was surprised to see one winter that the sea had broken around the back of the structure. It was like the castles that we built on the sand, first the sea worked round the back of the mounds, then it chipped away at the base, small chunks falling from the sides, and then finally and suddenly, a single wave overwhelms what had been there and the terrain is flat again. Not even a causeway built to carry the road and railway to the power station could prevent the inevitable.
Now, the remains of the power station sit eleven miles out to sea, a lit beacon the only sign that it ever existed.
Each year we watched the coastline move closer, the smell of the salt of the sea becoming stronger each summer. Each year we would hear of a farmer that we knew losing their farm to the sea, in its entirety. A complete village wiped off the map in the space of two years. The ruins of a thousand year old abbey swallowed in months.
And now the sea is lapping at the base of the cliff that stands a few feet from our front door, not a uniform straight coastline, but one of fingers of sea, seeking the softest substrate. In many ways the lagoon is beautiful. My heirloom, poised on the edge of a cliff above a beautiful lagoon, waiting to be tipped like rubbish into a skip. Worthless. Uninsurable. Everything that could be salvaged packed away and put into storage. What's left is a shell, vibrant wallpapers, thick, stained oak floors, why take the curtains? This is the only home I have ever known.
On the radio they announce that last year sea levels had risen exactly two metres since 2016. In a few years, the coast will have returned to where it was ten thousand years ago.
I haven't even asked where we're going. There's a large removal van parked behind the house, to the west. We're lucky that the road approaches from the west, as if we had planned our own escape route.
As a studious sixteen year old, I immediately searched for local books, and discovered that the entire plain to the east was formed from glacial deposits as the ice retreated after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago. That is why the land is so fertile, and so flat, a continuous stretch of farmland. Twelve miles of flat, open, boulder clay until you reach the sea. In the past ten thousand years the coast had retreated by twelve miles. In another ten thousand years it would reach our house. That seemed a huge safety margin.
I made a friend, and we would cycle to the coast and wander along the beaches, watching month by month the road slipping down the small cliffs onto the beach, then slowly disappearing into the sea. Four hundred metres inland stood my perfect house, a large bay windowed Victorian structure, with roses of every colour in the front garden, and a perfect lawn to the rear. We would climb onto the garden wall and make plans as to how we would lay out the formal garden, which vegetables we would grow. When I was twenty five, having returned from university, my friend and I went every day to stand and stare as the large house was consumed, room by room, by the incoming tide. There was a violent storm which lasted for two days, at the end of which there was no trace of the building as it had been. Two weeks later, the furthermost garden wall tumbled down, welcomed by the incoming sea. The house that was built to last several lifetimes was but a pile of rubble strewn across the beach. Over time the building materials were scavenged.
The first time I realised how great an issue was facing us was when the power station became an island. Always heavily fortified against the incoming sea, concrete the solution to coastal erosion, I was surprised to see one winter that the sea had broken around the back of the structure. It was like the castles that we built on the sand, first the sea worked round the back of the mounds, then it chipped away at the base, small chunks falling from the sides, and then finally and suddenly, a single wave overwhelms what had been there and the terrain is flat again. Not even a causeway built to carry the road and railway to the power station could prevent the inevitable.
Now, the remains of the power station sit eleven miles out to sea, a lit beacon the only sign that it ever existed.
Each year we watched the coastline move closer, the smell of the salt of the sea becoming stronger each summer. Each year we would hear of a farmer that we knew losing their farm to the sea, in its entirety. A complete village wiped off the map in the space of two years. The ruins of a thousand year old abbey swallowed in months.
And now the sea is lapping at the base of the cliff that stands a few feet from our front door, not a uniform straight coastline, but one of fingers of sea, seeking the softest substrate. In many ways the lagoon is beautiful. My heirloom, poised on the edge of a cliff above a beautiful lagoon, waiting to be tipped like rubbish into a skip. Worthless. Uninsurable. Everything that could be salvaged packed away and put into storage. What's left is a shell, vibrant wallpapers, thick, stained oak floors, why take the curtains? This is the only home I have ever known.
On the radio they announce that last year sea levels had risen exactly two metres since 2016. In a few years, the coast will have returned to where it was ten thousand years ago.
I haven't even asked where we're going. There's a large removal van parked behind the house, to the west. We're lucky that the road approaches from the west, as if we had planned our own escape route.
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