About a mile or two into my walk, I come across footprints on the stepped part of the seawall. Viewed as a lasting reminder of our attempts to keep coastline movements at bay, these strike me as appropriate. Feet set in fresh concrete stand in sharp contrast to the footprints that were in 2013 discovered on the seashore of Happisburgh, the next village on my walk. Happisburgh has long been subject to significant coastal erosion. Since 2005, with the coastal policy shift to ‘Managed Realignment’, land has been washing away at an unprecedented rate, up to 6m per year on average, with sections of over-winter cliff loss reaching up to 15m. National Coastal Erosion Risk Map predicts that the sea will make further advances of up to 150m by 2105, taking with it a number of properties, a local pub and
the church. By 2026, Happisburgh’s erosion is well on track to meet, and surpass, these estimates. And yet while climate projections certainly paint a grim picture of the village, there are also other stories that can be told. Aside from erosion, the East Anglian coastline is globally known for its geological and archaeological record, with rapid coastal change both erasing and revealing what lies beneath our feet. Processes that would otherwise take thousands of years inland are here responsible for a number of discoveries which shine light on patterns of past human inhabitation and markedly different ways of life. On a rainy day in May 2013, Happisburgh’s eroded foreshore revealed one such discovery - 900,000 years old fossilised footprints, the earliest evidence of humans outside Africa.
14 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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