Coastal Damage

Recent forecasts for today were for a continued domination by an easterly airstream with rain and high winds but today has turned out quite different: a light wind - easterly - and occasional showers and sunny intervals, but this good cheer was rapidly depressed by....

....the scenes along our usual walk from Golspie Burn to Dunrobin Castle and beyond, where the sea had, during the night, broken over the storm beach to pile....

....tons of stones over the track. Talking to locals, they hadn't seen anything like this in thirty years.

The waves had even had the temerity to break through the sea wall which protects the castle grounds and run right up to knock upon the castle gate.

The consequences of this weather for the wildlife is increasingly dire. This was the only living cormorant I could find along the beach - there were plenty of dead ones - and the pathetic corpses of cormorants and razorbills were joined by....

....no less than five dead seal pups, probably from a seal colony a few miles north of Golspie.

The coast to the south of Golspie has been even harder hit. Parts of the golf course have been flooded by the sea, leading to the closure of the course, the go-kart track is flooded as is the static caravan park and its house.

Everyone I talk to is saying how bad the situation is, and that next time the sea might well cut the A9. Perhaps then the government will be forced to carry through the coastal protection works which have been discussed and discussed for a good few years, with no action taken.