Tall tales and true: of Yorkshire moors and the byways of Surrey: A fragile coastline

We are running out of time in Yorkshire. We have only a few days of exploring left before we head south to spend some time in Surrey, and with the weather closing in more and more each day we are running out of fine days as well. So, mindful of that, but with no real plan to guide us, today we set out along minor roads we have not travelled before down the southern peninsula, south of Flamborough Head, just to enjoy the last of the sun and scenery.

We came across small clusters of white wind turbine sculptures on a few farmers' fields and stopped to listen. We have heard folk complain about these electricity turbines and the noise pollution from them, but we silenced the car engine and sat right under their sails and they are whisper quiet. Some sit so starkly beautiful in the landscape and appear so harmless that we sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about, given that they quietly and efficiently contribute to the energy grid as well as offering select farmers the opportunity to make a small income. It is when these things are abused, I think, that real problems arise.

Caravan sites, wooden chalets and holiday lodges occupy so much land along all the seafront here. If anything could potentially become an eyesore, these could in grim years. In this part of the world such sites are literally exploding in size and number at the moment, and many a farmer's field is also being utilised as extra locations for transient camping sites. The numbers of folk who visit this coastline on a daily basis is phenomenal. We cannot quite get our heads around where they all come from.

We are staying in a rather elegant small coastal town which has only about 30% private home owners living all year round. The remaining homes, many of them large and lovely, are given over to holiday lets, second homes and rental cottages. Daily, hoards of people park on the two roads that lead down the cliffside to the beach. Most every day crowds of folk, usually with their dogs, walk up and down the promenade or the beach, or the town centre, in even the wettest, windiest weather. It is busy. And, despite being October there are folk still swimming and board riding. To each his own.

While talking to a couple out walking their dog along one of these tracks lined with static caravans we noticed, that had we continued on the road we were parked, we would have driven straight into the sea. The bitumen road is no longer there. It has been washed into the sea and gone, and the scars, the slide, the earth fall, look so new and fresh that we started asking questions. When did this happen? How? What is the solution? The lady of the duo was quick to answer. She has been coming here for forty years, she said, and the sea eats away a little more land each year, taking whole cabins, caravans and houses at times. Some years it takes just a small bite. Other times it's a giant gulp, and in so doing cracks the surrounding land, making it easier to pull away next year. And where it is secured one year, making it look good and safe and strong, the man said, you move the inevitable destruction just a little bit further down along the coast. The threat never goes away. The sea is reclaiming its space, he said.

And this ebb and flow of water and earth has been happening since the Ice Age, apparently. At its height ice covered much of any of the low land and marsh land that is now Wales and Scotland down to Yorkshire. As the ice withdrew it pulled with it till, or boulder clay: chalk, limestone, ironstone, laying it elsewhere. Doggerland, between England and Europe navigable by foot, allowed different cultures to move westward from the continent. This was racked by a giant tsunami some eight thousand years ago which started in Norway. A hundred mile stretch of Norway's coastline literally cracked off and fell into the sea, creating a tidal wave of such proportions that it swept everything in its path, enabling the North Sea to expand.

Today, the most vulnerable are at the mercy of the sea. We continued driving out to every beach vantage point we could, to see how the coast fared, passing Hornsea, down to Withernsea. The very names of these coastal settlements tell their historic tale: 'sea' comes from 'sey' meaning lake or mere, so places ending in 'sea' typically were on, or close to, the water. Hence their vulnerability.

Over time, the sea continues to encroach. In Roman times it has been estimated that the coastline along here was two to three miles further out to sea, in various parts. A sign we came upon at Withernsea told us that the site where a 13th century church once stood, St Mary the Virgin, was now one mile out to sea, buried underwater.

Many people have lost their caravans, holiday cottages, homes, and every year the sea threatens yet again. Whole small towns have disappeared. Rarely are they recompensed though some local authorities attempt to assist financially with grants for removal and debris clearing. To mitigate the erosion local authorities seem to continually be seeking grants and funds for barriers, walls, groynes, giant stones, whatever will work as a temporary barrier. They just don't appear to have the funds to do more than short term solutions. A tea lady in Withernsea told us that their community was about to spend millions on giant stones to be laid along the beach, importing them from Norway, which, we thought, rather ironic. What goes around comes around, it seems.