This was the first time I had watched your channel and found brilliant please carry on your work if you have app called plain finder load it up you’ll be heart broken to find the amount of air craft In our skys it’s a mass of white all over the U.K. and Same all over world then their amount of bombs and distraction around the world it needs to stop
Around much of the Scottish coast the land is, slowly, rising up out of the sea and there are many raised beaches around the coast. This is happening because the land is still springing up after the weight of ice sheets from the last ice age melted. There are localised areas of coastal erosion but the eroded land is normally dumped to form new areas of land further along the coast.
@@mikw1809 No it isn't, it is a straw for afraid conspiracy theorists to cling to. Parts of the coast erode, other parts receive the material that was lost from the eroded areas, that doesn't mean global sea levels aren't rising, you mysteriously afraid fool.
There are tens of thousands of meteorologists and climate scientists who have looked at the data and concluded that climate change is responsible for the erosion around the world, warmer temperatures, more intense storms, more rain, etc. But, thank you for giving us just one example to "prove" your point. Try contacting the lobstermen in Southern New England who have seen their catch diminish because of warmer waters or the residents of Louisiana, particularly their islands which are quickly disappearing or the coasts of Alaska where communities are forced to move inland or the increased temperatures around the world, the vanishing glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and other mountain regions. Don't forget to research the salt water encroaching on fresh water supplies in Florida and in coastal areas around the globe. But, again, thank you for sharing about Harlech castle. @@mikw1809
Funny how so many people condemned me for saying this although it is scientifically correct. Reality is the 'Doom Mongers' will always look for something to reinforce project fear. I'm 77 and have seen this for most of my life.
As you point out, the Norfolk coastline has been eroding for 5,000 years. Not just the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, funnily enough. And as others here have commented: Whenever new, resilient sea defences are implemented at one town, they appear to have a knock-on negative effect upon another town's coastline. Tricky.
My Grandparents lived there back in the 1980s. They moved away when the sea defences at Winterton (just up the coast) were constructed because they felt that this will happen. They lived up at the Glebe which is behind the slide you see by the coast (that is looking from the coast). I had many great holidays there visiting in my teens.
The issue isnt that the coast has been eroding since the last Ice age ended (or therabouts) its that its eroding MUCH FASTER because of climate change.
That's why the Netherlands has implemented ministry and water management areas that have their own financial and political power. They are separated from the Dutch government to prevent these kind of negligence.
@hunchanchoc8418, exactly it's the old nomenclature game with the words, climate change. The climate's been changing since the dawn of time. Long before the industrial Revolution. Sure there's climate change but mankind is not the primary culprit. Look to Mother nature and our sun's phases especially the solar minimums and maximums that greatly affect Earth's storms and other weather. People don't know historical weather patterns or much about meteorology and natural science.
Not really. With the history of erosion that swamped those communities now in the ocean and only a little over 3000 people sitting on private property essentially living all year in seasonal 2nd homes the community should be condemmed, all houses destroyed and everyone resettled procatively and end this nonsense once and for all.
They are free to move from their private property to somewhere else. Although there’s more behind it. Oh no, they are just caravan and holiday parks not normal housing.
At Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, the sea is now 200 metres further out than it was in the 1960s, the pier now never has water under it. This is opposite to what we are being told. Much of the coastal erosion and the Great Yarmouth extra depositing is caused by dredging to accommodate larger ships and that changes tidal flows.
Castle Harlech built at the sea 741 years ago, is now 2 miles (3218 metres) inland. That's 4.3 metres per year that the sea has retreated. I think the agenda is to tax our existence and "climate change" sensationalists are creating the justification for it
Climate change, climate change. Yes it's changing, it's always changing. The Sun, the largest contributor to climate change has just switched its magnetic polarity, something that happens cyclically. As a result and along with the normal solar cycles as we do not go around the Sun in a perfect circle, we are about to go into a cold era, which will be evident by 2035. Cold actually makes storms worse. Most flooding is down to the stupidity of planners building on flood plains.
Yes, these issues are more complex than the video makes them out to be. My old flatmate was from Great Yarmouth. He didn't have too many great things to say about it, but I think he just had a rough childhood. East Anglia with its lowlands and broads is simply a bit different from many areas of coastal Britain where the sea has been attacking cliffs for millennia. I briefly lived in Cambridgeshire as a foreigner. That was my tenth year in Britain and I've not been back since. It was becoming an increasingly unfriendly nation and the anti-immigrant sentiment exploded into Brexit soon after I left. I'm a highly educated white American and noticed it. I was hardly the primary target of all that ire. I send kind greetings to beautiful East Anglia. It will outlive all the current mess that Britain has heaped on itself.
@grahambennett8151 Not to mention the thing that helped Brexit was the issue of illegal immigration, including the explosion of knife crime in London, a series of terrorist bombings and gang rape from the particular ethnic group in question. The French aren't helpful, they are apparently ferrying these migrants to the shores where they get into rubber dinghies which have to be bought somewhere, which aren't suited for carrying that many people across the channel and because of ECHR, it forces us to rescue them but when they commit crime we simply can't punish them. None of these politicians actually care, they like posturing more than fixing the core systems and making life better for everyone.
Déjà vu?! We need your help. Sadly we had to re-upload this video which is not ideal. We spent 2 months reporting on this story and have put in a huge amount of time and effort in bringing it to you all. The way the platform works is when a video is released, it first shows it to our core audience and if you choose to click on it and watch a large portion of it, only then it’s pushed it out to a wider audience. We believe most of you guys, our core subscribers reading this in the first few hours/days, have likely already seen the video and thus might click away. The biggest way in which you can help us and amplify this story is by watching it again, and then, engage with it as much as you can - every like, comment, and share is incredibly helpful. With the help of the people in Hemsby and their trust in our platform, we believe we have produced a really great documentary on the issue and we want to give it the best chance of success. If you made it this far thank you for reading and supporting our work and we hope you enjoyed the video. 🙏
I knew that had to be it. When I saw it yesterday I thought it was criminal how little views in brought in for how much work yall did. I hope it does better this time!
I've seen videos that were criminally low in views suddenly weeks or months later get picked up by the algorithm and get from 4 digit to 6-7 digit views, I can only hope yours will be one of those because this video and your other ones definitely deserve 7 digit views for sure. I will watch the whole video again today.
I'm from just down the coast from Hemsby and we also lost homes and part of a road to sea a couple weeks ago. Pakefield beach has been almost washed away. I walk there every morning and often take photos. The change in the last 6 months has been happened so quick, with a big noticeable difference. I'm shocked by the lack of government help to protect our coastline and the home alone it.
Our government never plan ahead as it would cost money, so they wait till it breaks and pay a relative an absolute fortune to fix it...might even give em a knighthood while they're at it.
You want them to go and fucking prop the entire cliff face up with steel beams or something? Create ugly, mile long sand dunes that will get swept away instead and need to be topped up every few years? In all honesty it's more concerning the government went completely batshit stupid and let people live this close to the cliffs. This shit has been happening for centuries and only after the 40s did the government start letting people just prop up entire new communities next to an ever changing cliff face or river
I used to work in Lowestoft at Broadland Sands, I left in November and my friend has just gone back for the weekend and even she said that so much of the rocks have fallen even just in a couple of months
I'm from Birmingham, I love travelling around the UK mostly for hiking and camping but I'm going to add Hemsby to my list of places to visit. Not necessarily for the beach, I'll buy some food, pay for parking and check out a place that needs a bit more attention.
Bacton is 18 miles north of Hemsby, further along the same coastline. It too is suffering coastal erosion. However, the Bacton Gas Terminal is based there, to receive gas from Europe. I am sure coastal sea defences will be built there, as that site is part of the UK's Critical National Infrastructure.
I didn't know about all the extra stuff surrounding the council and the local MP, but I'd heard of the group trying to save the place. Great video guys! I just want to say a few things about Hemsby I used to visit Hemsby with my family for holidays every year. It really was a stereotypical British seaside town, and over the last 15 years it's changed massively. About 7 years ago there was a noticeable difference in the beach between the visits that we had (previous year: flat and sprawling, following year: the entrance to the beach was about 1m higher than the beach itself) however; this didn't seem to effect tourist number all that much as the beach was still accessible. My family and I would even walk down The Marrams to nearby Caister during our visits. There is a couple of things I'd like to add to this that weren't mentioned in this video: 1) The red building next to the short stay car park opposite the Marrams is an RNLI station. I assume that they aren't operating out of there anymore and have moved their boat and crew to another station that still has access to the sea close by, but I am uncertain of this. 2) When a bit of shoreline is eroded it has to go somewhere, and in this case it seemed that it went further south, down to Great Yarmouth. As (during the same visit I mentioned earlier) we noticed that the pier at Great Yarmouth had significantly more sand under it, and a lot less sea. It's a shame to see this happen, but it is unfortunately a consequence of the area and it's geology and geography. Also as I've had such fond memories of the place growing up. Maybe one day I'll take children of my own down there and tell them how it once was, but it's unfortunately looking like it's borrowed time for that to happen. To anyone that made it this far: thanks for reading my comment on my connection to the place.
Good points, but also to mention that the construction of Great Yarmouth outer harbour appears to have caused the erosion of Hopton Beach, though this has been denied. So I do have to wonder what else might have caused the similar deposition of sand at Hemsby which built the dunes in the first place, to go into reverse.
This is terrible. A similar thing happened here in Denmark and my grandma was living in one of the affected areas, but her insurance paid her and her neighbors out so they could move.
Jullie Denen zijn ook niet de slimste hè, jullie moeten met een helm op fietsen omdat je bang bent dat je valt en je weet niet eens hoe je een dijk moet bouwen. Waarschijnlijk kan je dit niet eens lezen ook nog.
@@gaudetjaja IIk kan het lezen, al was het '51 toen wij naar de UK emigreerde. Dijken worden in Nedeland gebout waar het zich loont. In the Fenland en North Lincolnshire ziyn er dijken genoeg, de engelse weeten wel hoe. Maar de hele kust van Lincolhshire tot de Thames te beschermen? Nederland zou daar ook een beetjy over nadenken.
these people literally choose to live here in the last 10-15 years, knowing full well the risks it entailed. No taxpayer money should be spent on these whinging fools. All of these communities should have all taxpayer funding withdrawn, and the land should be compulsory purchased at low market rates and then the residents resettled. Its ridiculous spending more and more money to prevent something which can never be stopped - the coast is erroding, its a stupid place to live.
In Nederland graven ze tegenwoordig stukken uit de duinen, de HELE kustlijn, om het drinkwater te laten verzouten en het achterland (hopen ze waarschijnlijk) te laten verzuipen en verkassen naar het oosten.
Thanks for this, very interesting! Im originally from Guernsey, Channel Islands. We get battered too. But thats just nature. Apart from that our beaches are empty (compared to the good old days when Guernsey was a holiday destination until the late 1970s - as Hemsby used to be), our beaches are all still in the same place. Cos Guernsey is made mostly of granite and we build a lot of our houses with granite. Not flimsy wooden bungalows on a sand dune. The problem with Hemsby is its coastline. Its just not made to last.
@@brianaitchison6060 A 'House built on Sand' can be seen intact on the edge of the beach at Bude, Cornwall. A Victorian (eccentric?) built a Mansion House, now the Council Offices, on the beach, and not a crack or a crumble visible anywhere, because the House was built on basically a big concrete boat, foundation, one solid lump of concrete, so for any movement of the sand around it, the house / building just floats along on it's concrete 'boat' ...Norfolk and Holderness are something else, of course, buildings on the coastline locations would still tip over onto the beach if they were built on lumps of concrete.. Strange for sure, to see a road in Holderness that heads for the sea, and then just disappears out of existence at the edge of the coastline - warning signs of course - and so a lot of history of the coastal erosion along this coast. ..At Hornsea: Rolston Musketry Training Camp, as it was in WW1, it was in use for weapons training in WW2, with three concrete towers by the coastline. Winston Curchill featured in a famous foto, there; posing with a Tommy gun, introduced from America, to be tested at Rolston - Adolf Hitler 'approved' of the pose, saying it made Churchill 'look like a Mafia man that he was' ..Soldiers training were posted to 2 of the 3 towers on the cliff top, and an RAF plane would then arrive and attack the one vacant tower. To teach soldiers the importance of getting communications information correct and up to date. The three towers were rebuilt three times, during the war, retreating 3 times from the incoming sea / erosion.
You covered so much in this film and captured many of the issues we are trying to solve from many perspectives. I’m a researcher in this field, my focus is in North Norfolk but I often go to Hemsby at weekends and I’m working hard more generally to help find long term solutions to the inevitable changes we face. Thank you for making this film.
I used to go to Hemsby when I was a kid in the 70s and later worked on Pontins site in the 90s. I have been back during the last couple of years and its truly astounding to see how close the sea has come inland.
Wow, very insightful story. The timing also proved to be impeccable, makes it feel almost documentary level quality. Great video you guys keep raising the bar
A voice? Given these people don't know they're being attack with weather warfare, which is true for the majority, they don't know either, that climate change is weather technology. He or she is giving the criminals funding this weather& climate engineering technology a faked VOICE. He's is selling it as climate change due to co2. They're doing this to towns all across the world , but NOT in smart cities, you won't see this happening to the richest elites living by the shore. Weather and climate engineering technology is criminal when used to attack places and people, especially since it can be used to mitigate storms but it's used against the majority to con them into believing it's due to co2 for carbon taxes and carbon credit.
I hope everyone watches this again. This is the kind of content I wish more journalists pursued, I know that it will never be as popular as hot button topics. But, when discussing climate change or war it’s stories like this where we see practical, real world examples of what these larger topics look like. It’s the kind of thing that made VICE News so interesting early on and I should say Faultline is doing an exceptional job at that.
It's not really climate change. If you live by a river the same shit happens. The river moves, the cliffs erode. They're not something that stays forever and these settlements have been there for god knows how long. Some from well well before the 19th century and others set up right on the fucking cliffs getting upset when storms come along every year and the weak stone cliffs, chalk and softer variety's, collapse. The government here are fucking idiots. They allow you to build multi millions worth of homes by a constantly changing river or cliffside but if you put up a shed they'll fucking be on your ass over every little aspect of your own garden. I live in a valley of lowland Scotland. For time immemorial the rivers go up and down, the towns along then that were stupidly given the green light for council homes by the river get flooded almost every year. This wasn't an issue before the war, because before the war these places weren't allowed. They were reserved for farms where flooding would be detrimental to crops and livestock but not thousands of people and hundreds of thousands in property damage.
Yet in Spain, Mums beach has widened a good 20 metres out to sea and Roman ruins have been uncovered from the original sea line, buried by the sea for hundreds of years.
The issue is with the holderness coast is that the land is essentially borrowed. 12,000 years ago when the ice age was coming to an end and the glaciers that retreated glacial till was left behind building up the coast. But this stuff erodes very easy and at a rate of 2m a year. Its very complex
This is my first time watching the channel but this has been an incredibly informative and captivating watch! I love the genuine perspectives of real people and how you explore all angles of the information
Never been to the Norfolk coast. But I even remember as a child (40 something years ago) that the Norfolk coast was a very popular holiday destination in the 70s/80's & into the 90s. My mum even knew people back in those days who loved it so much they moved there. To see it all lost is tragic. I will visit one day. It's been on my places to go list for a while now. I think what's happening does put me off a little. But Norfolk always looks absolutely stunning. Thank you for sharing this
It seems like the good people of Norfolk could use another Sand Engine. It uses natural currents to grow beaches and strengthen the coastline using an artificial sandbank, which has also recreational purposes. It works fine in the Netherlands and it's much cheaper than traditional coastal defences.
I'm not a geologist or geographer by any stretch, but as someone that used to go there regularly: it seems that the sand from Hemsby has ended up at Great Yarmouth as the beach there grew massively around the same time that it shrank at Hemsby
You have to be careful with things like this. See how Hopton beach has been washed away since the Great Yarmouth outer harbour was built.....and see how the beach further down the coast is actually being built.....in Great Yarmouth, the pier is no longer in the sea and the sea wall is a long long way back from where the sea actually is.
True, assume that the sea currents go south to north. Built a large sand engine just south from the area were coastal erosion is a thing. Problem solved or at least made 80-90% less urgent. Unbelievable that British polticians and civil servants don't understand this. They must be stupid.
It’s funny to me that all these places that are being eroded heavily are all places that aggregate dredging happens out at sea. This information is easy to come across with a google search for sea dredging maps but no one is talking about it and we are just told that it’s a natural process.
Oh, really? How about the White Cliffs of Dover, and the Jurassic Coast in Dorset - which were being eaten away by the sea before the Romans invaded, 2,000 years ago? It IS a natural process, so take your damn tinfoil hat off and look at the historical and archaelogical evidence!
I’ve seen maps from the middle ages. Large swathes of land in somerset, norfolk, suffolk, lincolnshire, essex, kent and hampshire were under the sea or tidal swampland. The sea returning to these areas is resetting the status quo.
@@Conclusius68 i have seen copies of the mediaeval maps. Show me the contemporaneous maps from the Ice Age , dear, then you would have hard evidence to back up your conspiracy theories.
@@lulabellegnostic8402Just get your Google out and google Dogger Land. The North Sea was mostly dry land because the water was contained in huge glaciers. Not a conspiracy, just science.
@@Conclusius68 A lot of land on the east coast of England is drained tidal wetland, as sea level rises those areas are going to return to this. however a lot of the areas people live on is not part of this.
Doesn't sea defences in one place shift the focus of erosion downshore? Would have been good to have some more context about the pros and cons of different options.
I remember reading in a local newspaper back when Great Yarmouth “Outer harbour” was constructed. & there was mention of the environmental effects on currents and the sandbanks out there. Makes you wonder if there has been an noticeable increase in erosion SINCE that was constructed. As Hemsby is only a few miles north along the coast! 🤔 Great series BTW. I very much enjoyed this video! 👏
This is a nightmare for these poor people. I can’t believe how many towns have just vanished off the map. As a coastal dweller in the US, I’m blessed that I’m far enough back from the cliff that I still have the view, but not the danger. Other than hurricanes. But it’s been 135 yrs. Since we had a hit. Just so sorry.
This is happening in a fair few places across the east coast, Happisburgh is also falling into the sea fairly rapidly. It's always happened here, a lot of the towns and villages he mentioned went to the sea quite a while ago. The difference is it's never happened close to as rapidly as it is now. And back when those other towns went, we didn't really have the knowledge or resources to stop it. We do now and our govt just doesn't give a shit.
@@ItsSpecialHands As noted, the government decided it would cost too much to build a comprehensive defence system to protect the UK against Climate Change sea level rise.. Careing isn't a consideration in the politics world of this country.
Amazing video. I’ve been to this coastline and this is the best and most accurate documentation of the resilience of these desperate communities. It really sums up the problem. I like that you got a scope of arguments as well
Between 15 and 20 years ago I was thinking of moving from Kent to Norfolk and arranged with a local estate agent to view a property in Hemsby. However, when I did some research I found that the area was subject to erosion and, although the property I was going to view was quite a long way from the coastline, I worked out that it could become much closer over say, a ten year period so I cancelled the viewing. At that time though, and the reason I changed my mind was, that I had read that a lot of the erosion was being caused by contractors being allowed to dig up shale from the seabed for use in the building trade and this was causing the sand and earth to slip into the deep holes that this was causing just off the land. Such articles are no longer available on the internet and I can't be making this up because how would I have known that unless I'd read it somewhere? At the time I thought it must be the local council that was allowing this but I'm interested to see from this programme that the coastal area is partly privately owned and partly owned by the Crown Estates (the Royal Family). Was it these two owners who were allowing the shale to be mined from the seabed for the profit it would have been making? Nobody in this programme has reported seeing any of this shale mining taking place but could it be the case that most of the people who knew about have since died? It seems odd to me that nobody seems to know about this alleged shale mining which could have contributed heavily to this erosion.
It’s sad to see the second dune no longer! Spent many summer holidays in Hemsby playing amongst the dunes as a child… for the most part these were just holiday homes, the older buildings are pretty much sheds, some of which had outside toilets and showers.
But many of these homes are cheaper to buy so enabling those who retire on small pensions to have their own home, possibly for the first time and expected to live out their retirement and have clearly improved their homes. As one resident said, when they moved they were told it was eroding at 1m a year. But, because climate change has acelerated significantly over the last 5 years , they are now losing huge chunks of coastline at a time. Every system has its tipping point. It is only a matter of time before this is happening at many other places around UK and that is before we mention homes lost to flood waters or built on flood plains. The government has not recognised the impact of this long term and has not put a plan in place expecting 'the market' to solve the problem but what profit is there to be made for the market by protecting a few homes-none. There is no strategic thinking in UK. Britain's climate refugees.
What fascinates me is that people are still buying houses in a coastal area that has been eroding for centuries and acting like victims when their house falls into the sea.
Simple: Because the people selling those houses are telling the buyers, "Oh the rate of erosion means there will be no problems here for at least 100 years." Adn they base that on erosion and storm frequence _from 200 years ago._ But, Climate Change _is here _*_NOW._* 100-year floods and storms are now happening once or twice a decade. So that "yOu'Ll HaVe No PrObLeMs FoR __ years" needs to have _""_ divided by 10. Not the buyer's fault they're being lied to by people stuck in the 19th-Century. The converse is happening here in the US, in the desert southwest. Droughts that used to be a few times a century are now _the new normal._ Yet people are using water like it's 1920 … which was an abnormally wet decade in the US southwest.
I've just started watching but wanted to thank you for making this video. I grew up with annual holidays to Hemsby at the Seacroft holiday camp. I've not been there since my friend who lived there passed away several years ago, and it is heartbreaking to see what has happened.
Coastal erosion has always been going on. The simple answer is don't buy or build your home too close to a coast where erosion is an issue. Just as you shouldn't buy or build your home on a flood plain if you're not keen on water flowing into your living room. It's not rocket science.
That's a really great documentary. Many countries around the world are experiencing similiar problems. My wife is from Jakarta, Indonesia. The future of her city is uncertain, because of the sinking city and rising water levels. The Dutch are also involved there to try to save the Indonesian capital. It's a shame the British government is not acting quicker and trying to find long term solutions for that coastline, and especially for the residents of Hemsby which are running out of time.
Sadly, there is a finite amount of cash available nationally and our current government is too busy dishing out small fortunes to Rwanda in its insane policy of discouraging a few small boats carrying illegal migrants from crossing the channel instead of selecting the most urgent problems!
@@royfearn4345 even so... how can justify spending over 40 miljon, to protect only some 3000 residents , for maybe 10 years top? before you would need to respend such an amount? it's a natural process of decline on one end, and land growth an the other.. indeed seriously fastened by climate change.. witch mean, it's only gone speed up, and gonne need WAY bigger, way more expensive defenses withing 10 , 20 and 30 years time... it's actually cheaper to move the whole town some km inwards that would give them at least 20 -30 years, that there new wooden homes would last.. building a dike in such a place makes no sense.. even the dutch have understood that now that can't hold up against the water everywhere, you have to choose places to let the water reclaim land too ..
I recall happy family holidays at Hemsby when our kids were of primary school age. The eldest is now a head of faculty at a secondary college, the youngest an accountant with the NHS. WE ALL REMEMBER HEMSBY as a vibrant family friendly place with a great beach. So sad it is being allowed to succumb to uncaring administration. Subscribed!
One possibility that wasn’t mentioned was Doggerland. Both sides of the North Sea are still experiencing crumbling and sinking. One gigantic sinkhole? 🤔
@@WaynesPokeWorldDoggerland disappeared at the end of the last ice age when the sea level rapidly rose by ~500ft. These wooden shacks are falling into the sea because they're built on eroding sand dunes, rather than solid land. There's no mystery here.
@@incandescentwithrageThank God someone has more intelligence than a turnip. It’s frightening how easy the other people commenting are brainwashed by these edgy, young, hip documentary makers who are full of sh*te!
I first holidayed at Hemsby as a kid around 45 years ago and remember playing on that WWII concrete pillbox. It was actually in among the sand dunes back then. It used to be a loooonnnngg walk from where the lifeboat station is through the dunes and across what was a vast beach before you could dip your toes in the sea. Now it is almost lapping at the door.
Swallowed by the sea, great video, are you going to make one about the large areas of land in the Uk , Europe and globally that have appeared due to the sea receding over the last 1000 years?
@@Tidybitz Hi, there are many areas of coastline around the Uk where the sea has retracted, for example Pevensy castle, built as a sea defence castle, now several miles inland. One area which will certainly entertain any budding historian, is “The American Corner “ an area of land in Hastings East Sussex, where the sea retracted, and an American claimed, and held the land , as an additional state of the Americas, until several years later the, the king decided enough was enough and took the land back under English sovereignty. This area is full of shops, restaurants and bars plus residential housing now days. Also look up the changing maps of the cinque port towns . Good luck.
@@glenreddy1435 I think they did touch up on that when the fella explained that even without climate change we'd see some level of this because the north is effectively rising and the south is sinking.
@@ItsSpecialHands Hi there, thank you for your comment, real truth I’m trying to point out is, there is no such thing as “without climate change”, as climatic changes are constant, since the dawn of time , the planet experiences noticeable shifts in short periods of time, and anything up to 5000 years, is a short period of time. There is no evidence that we are experiencing anything out of the normal. If you compare change, to the lifespan of the average human it will , look very different than if you compare over a 1000 years, something most climate change experts refuse to acknowledge, you will form a much different picture. Don’t forget the whole of the Uk was under a 3 mile thick ice glacier around 8000 years ago, the Sahara Desert was a rain forest at around the same time, Gobekli Tepe was a thriving civilisation 12000 years ago, in that short period, you wouldn’t recognise the planet today, especially if you focus on sea levels.
this is a familliar scenario to us dutch people right across the north sea. We did learn from erosion by letting the dunes grow which is a possibility for seaside towns like these as it creates a flood barrier and more beach in the long term. i hope some plan will be written up to save these places as i'm sure they're great tourist hotspots
Having grown up in Norfolk, this makes me so sad to see. We used to holiday here every summer during the 2000s as a kid. I stayed at Pontins and other holiday areas around Hemsby. It would be so sad to see it disappear.
Thank you so much for your video on this. I have so many fond memories of Hemsby, it sickens me that the government aren't doing anything, it's an absolute disgrace.
There are villages in Norfolk that were swallowed by the sea hundreds of years ago. There was a submerged church tower that had to be demolished because boats kept hitting it.
In the Netherlands we have the same problem with eroding dune beaches along the North-sea. It cost a lot of energy and money to supplement the sand by pumping water with sand onto the beaches before they get to the dunes. A new experiment is an artificial sand island that sits upstream of the eroding beach to have nature and flow supply the sand to counter the erosion. There is enough sand in the shallow north-sea to dredge-up for this purpose. We have an active ministry of "traffic and waterworks" (verkeer en waterstaat) that supervises these problems and contracts entrepreneurs that have these tools.
As the last ice age left the uk approx 10,000 years ago the land beneath already buckled by igneous activity began to tilt causing the South East area to rise exposing sedimentary deposits. Unfortunately sections of this were built on but with much of it falling back into the sea, many square miles of land have been reclaimed. What makes this worse is that this region is sinking year on year as the tilting action reverses due to homeostasis.
This land erosion has been happening for 60 years to my knowledge,when I was in the area as a teenager. Successive governments are well aware of he serious problem it is and have done next to nothing to stop it from destroying people's homes and lives.
It's been going on for centuries, Dunwich lost tracts of lands more or less overnight in the 1600's I think it was, when 9 parishes were lost, and a sand storm dropped tonnes of sand inland, theres loads of references on various history groups about how sand had ruined farmland, there's a time team program about it, it's the nature of that coast line all the way up to parts of the North East, holderness etc, at one time it was all connected to Europe via doggerland. Which was flooded out with rising sea levels after the last ice age ended, it's all mostly sand, and the jurassic parts of chalky lands from Dover & the seven sisters up to Hunstanton. Its such a "delicate" coastline so prone to the sea, government could spend trillions and not stop it I feel. Its very sad as its a lovely coastline.
Governments aren't King Canute you know. It's nature. Furthermore, when you build a house, you do so on a sound foundation. Sand isn't a sound foundation. When people want to live close to the sea, this will inevitably happen. People in the comments are saying all sorts of things as if something can be done. It can't. Just stop building on sand and when the storms come we will not have a problem.
I understand this at a personal level but one has to consider whether it's really worth it to spend tens of millions to foritify a coastline that has eroded for hundreds of years.
Great video. I hope the Hemsby folks get real help but it doesn't look like it. I am Dutch and I am very happy that water management is taken very seriously here. Even right now our investments pay off. The IJsselmeer, Markermeer and the big rivers have really high water levels, yet nothing serious happened thanks to our barriers and also the more recent mega-project 'Room for the river'. Along the rivers there are areas that can safely flood with only little preparation, to reduce the threat to the places we want to protect.
We were there in 1976 during the heatwave, you could not move in the swimming pool it was standing room only because everyone was in the pool trying to keep cool that summer, there was a lot more to the town back then than there is today, considering Hemsby brings in so much money every summer, you would of thought they would use that to help this town. It’s like they love the money coming in, but to hell with the town take what we can while we still can. With the amount of money that pours in each summer they could have built half a dozen erosion barriers in the past 30-40 years.
Hemsby is stuck in the early 80's. Its only been the last 3 or 4 years that shops there introduced card payment machines and still the shops have the same old tat year in year out
Places that rely on seasonal tourism are barely able to make ends meet. Doesn't matter how busy it gets on the busy days, buying an ice cream here and a bucket and spade there is barely enough to get them through winter, never mind huge projects to stop coastal erosion. Also don't forget that like Pontins, a lot of the money will be hoovered up by big businesses located elsewhere.
The UK is tipping over. I have a strong memory of visiting Harlech Castle on the (opposite) Welsh coast, in the mid 60s. I saw a vivid painting, from the middle ages, of a violent storm thrashing the cliffs on which the castle stands. At the time of my visit, the castle was three quarters of a mile inland.
I was told at school in 1986, that the area i live in would be 15ft underwater by the year 2000, here i am almost 40 years later, living 500 metres from the English Channel, and the sea still hasn't risen by the speculated 30 feet they predicted by computer simulation.
However, higher temperatures, shrinking glaciers, more intense storms, rising seas, etc. have become as they were predicted. Also, I would love to see that prediction about 15 feet underwater. You see, climate change deniers are notorious for lying and/or using hyperbole.
@@ptownRandy1 Climate is cyclical, I thought everyone knew that, man made climate change is fictitious government rubbish, I,m with Patrick Moore on this.
I live in WA state where we have several coastal communities suffering a similar fate. Much like Hemsby, one of my family's favorite places to visit on weekend trips, cabins located at Kalaloch, WA may need to be demolished soon because of eroding, encroaching coastline. There's even a famous landmark located nearby (the "tree of life" which is a tree seemingly defying gravity and supporting itself even as ground eroded beneath it... I've seen pics of it all over the internet). Sadly as climate change accelerates I think many of these communities may ultimately need to be relocated further inland. Great video as always.
Just for some context: Kalaloch is in Washington state in the USA. It’s within Olympic National Park, an area of the world that some became familiar with thanks to the popularity of the Twilight series. Indeed, Kalaloch uses the same ZIP Code as Forks (the town in which Twilight was set), meaning mailing addresses there have Forks addresses.
In your part of the world, you'd be best building some giant tsunami towers, as they have done at schools near Ocean Shores. Whatever coastal erosion you get in the next 200 years will be nothing compared to what happens within minutes when the undersea Juan de Fuca plate slips and subducts further under the Olympics, most likely within the next 200 years. Bands of sand in coastal soils there show that M9 earthquakes from this slipping action and corresponding tsunamis have been happening every 300-600 years for at least the past 18,000 years. The last one was in January 1700. This "Cascadia" coastal faultline runs from Victoria BC to the northern tip of California. FEMA estimates 12,000 people will die when the faultline slips. One of its officials famously has been quoted saying FEMA modelling shows that "everything west of I-5 will be toast". If the Tree of Life somehow manages to hang on, it will most likely become part of a ghost forest, like the ones that can be seen there now, made up of white, dead tall trees that drowned in salty water when a previous tsunami rushed past them.
Before climate change was invented, we were told that the British Isles are tilting along a North/South line. In Wales is a castle with steps leading down to a field which used to lead down to to sea. The sea is now half a mile away, and was considered proof of the tilt, lifting in the West and sinking is the East.
My family are from Great Yarmouth and part of Hemsby. Remember going to the holiday park as kids and the run down to the beach at Hemsby. My family had a caravan down near great Yarmouth. It was such a lovely memory. I haven’t been back there since a child that is such a shame.
Climate change is a natural phenomenon. The British islands were once a part of mainland Europe. But then there was no manmade pollution or cars or petrol nor diesel. Don’t believe the money driven propaganda about green revolution and manmade climate change. The rise and fall of sea level is a natural process. Also ignorance is a given, education without indoctrination has to be earned. People are constantly moving, there are so many coastal cities underwater from thousands of years ago. Never become attached to a piece of land. Love people not things. Land is to be used, material possessions are to be used, tools are to be used and serviced but not to be attached to. Expecting the weather to be always nice is similar to expecting to be in the wild and meet up with a hungry bear, wolf or lion and expect the predator animal not to try to eat you.
I live in sweden and far down in sweden close to denmark my onkel had a cabin about 30 years ago not so far from the beach,,,30 years later this cabbin is gone every thing there is wather.....if you compare this village "Hemsby" right over the sea is sweden/denmark and we also see the different how land disappears more and more...I hope they solve this in any way so they can save this village and houses etc...By the way Hemsby sounds very much like swedish.."BY" is Village in English "HEM" is Home in English so it sounds like "Home village"...sorry for bad speling
That's pretty irrelevant. There are sand dunes from the sea floor in midstate new york, but there's no scenario where the sea will recaim them for millennia.
I wondered if you’d bring up the Dutch. They have so much engineering, including natural methods, that work so well in protecting their country. Such an inspiration that really should be replicated.
At one point, these dunes were built, as they currently are in Great Yarmouth just down the coast - the sand was taken there via longshore drift, presumably. What changed that instead of dunes being built, they started being destroyed. Hemsby was clearly reliant on the deposition of sand from further up the coast....places that have now seen some sea defences built, changing the patterns of erosion there. For every action there is an opposite reaction...is it possibly that Hemsby is suffering now due to other sea defences as Hopton's beach has washed away since the Great Yarmouth outer harbour has been built? It is far more complex than just piling up rocks and building a wall, IMV....
People would rather continue to push the climate change agenda as it's far more fashionable at present. But what you suggest is a far more likely cause for sure. As you say every action as an opposite reaction, here I feel we are seeing that in action.
Climate change driven super intense storms wiping out towns stable and safe for almost a millennium heart-breaking socially culturally historically and the local people facing losses that one day or another wait for most of us…
We cannot save everywhere, but we can do much more to look after those affected. As government is deciding it's not worth supporting these regions, it should instigate strict planning restrictions preventing further development and a national insurance scheme to indemnify (at a reasonable premium) those whose homes are at risk. Basically, it's crash or soft landing and the government is choosing crash.
@@michaelthompson679 The boulders are a temporary solution. They might give protection from the regular waves, but not from storms, that have higher waves than the boulders go up. Also the boulders will sink down into the beach, so they need to be rebuilt from time to time (maybe every decade, maybe more frequently). Another problem is that if you stop erosion at one point, it will go faster next to it. In a century or so Hemsby will become an island, making it even more costly to protect. The solution would be to protect the entire coastline of England, but that is just not feasible (there is not enough boulders to eventually dump into the sea).
It's been like this since as far back as I can remember. We've always has erosion issues on the East Coast. It's mainly to do with tides moving the sand north
Up here in Angus., £16.4 million pounds was spent on river flood defences in Brechin. That scheme protected 150 properties from the installation year in 2015. It lasted 8 years before failing in 2023 with Storm Babet. A £100000 scheme per property and not fit for purpose. It goes to show why some communities crying out for defences aren’t going to get them: The prospective property to be protected isn’t worth the protection and the efficacy of the proposed protection isn’t known against future storms. The sad fact is that climate change is going to completely change much of our land and society.
@@karensims9817 nope I do. It’s not worth the cost in some places. But feel free to do a gofundme to get the money required if you think there’s enough interest. I think the interesting bit about Hemsby is that it’s all about people living in what are basically chalets and the area behind them? Holiday parks. It’s not the same as other places where there’s real housing
And the sad truth is the area was full of millionaire homes or near a royal home more would have been done to protect the Coastline. Unfortunately, our government and planners need to be more aware of what naturally happens in areas and stop allowing buildings in areas that have flooding or the land falling away. Maybe it's about time the government moves the town or maybe put a rock wall barrier along the beach and make a larger beach to protect the land.
When I was a child I used to go to Hemsby where my Grandfather owned a beach shack. I had many lovely holidays at Hemsby, so this news is a shock to me - 60 years later...
This really upset me greatly. Although I am 58 and from London, I spent a great deal of my childhood as a Cub Scout hiking around Suffolk and Kent. I am ashamed of the UK government's treatment of the people and the land in question. Despite the difference in size of the coastline between ourselves and the Netherlands, they appear creative in trying to protect their country from erosion, we by contrast are indifferent or just do not care. From memory a decision on the upgrade or replacement of the Thames Barrier will be required by 2040. A documentary from five or six years ago detailed how it must be opened hundreds of times a year to avoid areas of London and upstream being flooded. The point is, I can see this being a priority but coastal areas will be said to be not worthy of protection. We have to be honest. The UK is no longer a wealthy country. It was afforded the opportunity to be rich when it found North Sea oil but instead of saving the money like Norway, it chose to spend it on social security and lower rates of tax. The social security was necessary because we chose to close so called old industries and privatize many the state industries. We do not have the money nor do we have the imagination of the Dutch to attempt things such as dredging the sea floor and installing under barriers to calm the waves.
Yeah I pretty much agree with everything stated above.... I am from Withernsea area in East Yorkshire,, our erosion is as bad if not its worse. The gov could do so much, its not impossible ,,if the Dutch can do it why cannot we....
I live in Norfolk and I can tell you Norfolk county council is one of the councils that waste a lot of money on stupid things which could be put to better use like sea defences. They are only interested in protecting the bigger towns like Wells next to sea , Cromer, Kings Lynn and Great Yarmouth due to their size but they do seem to forget that with the current rate of erosion in the nearby villages on the Norfolk coast these major places will end up being islands as the unprotected areas will just disappear. I will wonder how long the Norfolk broads will last as that is another tourist destination which also happens to be below sea level and if those sea defences get breached the sea can go as far inland all the way places like Thetford and the fens which is reclaimed marshland. This has happened in 1953 and if you compared the sea levels of today to 1953 the disaster waiting to happen will be far worst. People forget that a lot of Norfolk is in fact flat . and below sea level.. I should know because I live on the Suffolk/ Norfolk border near Thetford and the Royal Ordnance Survey people have marked a sea level line on the side of my garage, which officially my property is a foot below sea level.
Great film and very informative. Sad to see so many homes under threat. However, there was no real discussion on a solution. Rocks at the base of the 'cliff' may save homes above, but not the beach. Is there a solution? Be good to hear what the ideal solution / flood defence is. I am not sure how you beat the sea? The cost line is convex in shape so a Dutch style barrier would not work that I can see? Be good to hear if any experts in teh field reading this have some proposals. Nonetheless, as the saying goes, 'An Englishmans home is his castle' - that castle may be made of bricks and mortar, it may be a narrow boat on a canal, or a wooden built chalet, but they are ALL homes and should be treated equally. I do not think there is a solution to save the beach, but authorities should treat all homes equally. I feel so sorry for those affected.
The extremely poor geology means that errosion protection is impossible it's that simple. Even the Dutch needed bedrock to build defences on when they exist you can pump sand as a filler so quoting Dutch technology is a bit off here. Sand you can only plant dune grass which here is not done because the dunes are full of private housing.
Why don’t they use Roman style concrete? The water makes the mortar expand and fill the damaged parts. One of the reason most Roman buildings are still around today without constant repair.
my mother passed away there while we were on holiday , it was such a beautiful place the beach was always busy and noisy. we spread her aches there : what a special place
I was standing with my friends on the beach at Hemsby 5 days before Xmas and had been there in the May, the difference was scary how fast the dunes had gone.....
Someone pointed out before that Tom Scott did a similar video two years ago about Covehithe which is about 30 miles south of Hemsby and similarly doomed. I like yours better because you took the time to talk to the locals.
Super video! I'd've been interested to hear a touch more on the geography of sediment cells in this context. I've only a (half-remembered) A-level understanding, but adding in lots of hard sea defences can worsen beach erosion, only protecting the dune edge. That suggests, from my layman perspective, that Hemsby will still lose its beach and much of its tourism despite expensive hard defences like a sea wall in place. Maybe softer defences or more indirect methods would be a more sustainable solution? Like encouraging sand dune succession with hardier vegetation, the construction of an artificial reef or sandbank to reduce wave energy further from shore and promote sediment deposition, or maybe adding groynes to catch sediment removal (if longshore drift is an issue here). Just a thought if you ever do a follow-up video or something similar. Although another difficult aspect is that these home-owners need help now, not after various studies have been completed & published. It is truly shocking to me that timber-framed houses don't qualify as permanent homes under government regulation, especially as we try to find more sustainable building materials than concrete. These people need help, & at the very least they need to have a stable insurance and relocation program available to them. I wish the government wasn't being so wobbly on their climate policies.
Some very good points. As for the houses, I believe most of them are leasehold properties so it would be for the landowner to deal with that, but sadly the video doesn't touch on that as much as I would have liked it to. And also to note that there are some of these homes for sale on Rightmove for £100k!
I live in Hull. I have never seen any flooding here. I've lived here since 2013, but have heard stories. Kingswood is a floodzone but they keep building on it. Lots of funding going to that area.
Used to go to Hemsby every year on holiday as a kid, didn't expect to find a UA-cam video about it! I'm 28 and even the changes from when I was a kid to now are insane
The UK governments do not seem to value the land we have, and seem more interested in diverting public funds into private hands rather than protect our valuable coastline. The Netherlands however believe in and have succeeded in land reclamation on an industrial scale. It puzzles me why our UK governments place so little value in our greatest asset, the land under our feet. My own area of East Yorkshire is the fastest eroding coastline in the UK, so my town will eventually be lost to the sea aswell, if no action is ever taken.
Maybe I’m a dum-dum, but there seems to be no economic incentive to save this town. Fact 1: The beach is what feeds the local economy. Fact 2: Those huge boulders that are being put in place to protect the houses from further erosion eliminate the possibility of beaches being there. These two facts cancel each other out economically. So even if the local authorities start to be proactive and help the residents, Hemsby won’t become a tourist destination again.
In Sydney Australia, there's an area prone to coastal erosion in occasional storms, now becoming more frequent. The council refused to allow development on tbe sandy strip on tbe beachside of tbe main road, but developers appealed through the State and got allowed to build there. But now it is council stuck with deciding how to manage it after most of people's backyards disappeared a few years ago. Including a swimming pool recently installed which engineers told the owner would be OK as storms were once in 100 years ans they'd recently had their storms. So much land disappeared, rhe pool stayed intact- except it had moved entirely on to thr Beach at a weird angle (& no backyard to put it back on). The council wanted to get rid of the houses, like what's happening in Hemsby, but residents decided to fund building a seawall themselves. Council agreed and chipped in 10% of thr enormous cost. Heaps of locals objected to the wall, as they thought it would prevent thr Beach ever replenishing. There's absolutely kilometres of beach on either side of the eroded bitz so i guess council isn't bothered.
So the town is built on a 100 foot thick sand dune. Should tell you something. Annual sea level rise is around its average over 10,000 year. Storms are weather, not some fictitious climate change. Government should have spent money as the Dutch did on proper sea defences. Sad people are losing their homes.
I live about 10 minutes away from Hemsby. Its been totally abandoned by anyone who could do anything to save it, its insane. The local MP Brandon Lewis just does not care - he was even the secretary of state for Northern Ireland for 2 years. Northern Ireland! No wonder he didnt care when his more "important" job was as far away from his actual constituents as humanly possible. By now its pretty obvious hes fully in the Westminster bubble, only really pretends to care about us when its time for winning votes again. The local council has just shrugged its shoulders and decided saving Hemsby would be too expensive without even bothering to consider its valuable position for tourism makes it worth spending the money to save it. Its a genuine shame what has been done to Hemsby, its an absolutely lovely place, and is just actively being allowed to die
Maybe things would get done if Parliament was rebuilt in, say, Hemsby? They can fund the Thames Barrier, maybe if politicians lived and worked on the edge they'd have a more positive approach to real people's problems?
Thanks for watching guys. Let us know of other places that are facing a similar threat that you would want us to cover.
pontins hemsby is demolished
Scituate, Massachusetts. It's been losing beach width and dunes for several years now.
Please don't make any more of these dreadful one-sided, biased and uninformative videos.
Withernsea, east Yorkshire.
This was the first time I had watched your channel and found brilliant please carry on your work if you have app called plain finder load it up you’ll be heart broken to find the amount of air craft In our skys it’s a mass of white all over the U.K. and Same all over world then their amount of bombs and distraction around the world it needs to stop
Around much of the Scottish coast the land is, slowly, rising up out of the sea and there are many raised beaches around the coast. This is happening because the land is still springing up after the weight of ice sheets from the last ice age melted. There are localised areas of coastal erosion but the eroded land is normally dumped to form new areas of land further along the coast.
Scotland is a much older and in Rock terms Harder(Granite) while most of England is soft Rock (Limestone and Sandstone)
@@mikw1809 No it isn't, it is a straw for afraid conspiracy theorists to cling to. Parts of the coast erode, other parts receive the material that was lost from the eroded areas, that doesn't mean global sea levels aren't rising, you mysteriously afraid fool.
There are tens of thousands of meteorologists and climate scientists who have looked at the data and concluded that climate change is responsible for the erosion around the world, warmer temperatures, more intense storms, more rain, etc. But, thank you for giving us just one example to "prove" your point. Try contacting the lobstermen in Southern New England who have seen their catch diminish because of warmer waters or the residents of Louisiana, particularly their islands which are quickly disappearing or the coasts of Alaska where communities are forced to move inland or the increased temperatures around the world, the vanishing glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and other mountain regions. Don't forget to research the salt water encroaching on fresh water supplies in Florida and in coastal areas around the globe. But, again, thank you for sharing about Harlech castle. @@mikw1809
Funny how so many people condemned me for saying this although it is scientifically correct. Reality is the 'Doom Mongers' will always look for something to reinforce project fear. I'm 77 and have seen this for most of my life.
They used to say that Scotland is grewsome, well it seems like it just grew some more
As you point out, the Norfolk coastline has been eroding for 5,000 years. Not just the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, funnily enough. And as others here have commented: Whenever new, resilient sea defences are implemented at one town, they appear to have a knock-on negative effect upon another town's coastline.
Tricky.
My Grandparents lived there back in the 1980s. They moved away when the sea defences at Winterton (just up the coast) were constructed because they felt that this will happen. They lived up at the Glebe which is behind the slide you see by the coast (that is looking from the coast). I had many great holidays there visiting in my teens.
You’re bang on sir
The issue isnt that the coast has been eroding since the last Ice age ended (or therabouts) its that its eroding MUCH FASTER because of climate change.
That's why the Netherlands has implemented ministry and water management areas that have their own financial and political power.
They are separated from the Dutch government to prevent these kind of negligence.
@hunchanchoc8418, exactly it's the old nomenclature game with the words, climate change. The climate's been changing since the dawn of time. Long before the industrial Revolution. Sure there's climate change but mankind is not the primary culprit. Look to Mother nature and our sun's phases especially the solar minimums and maximums that greatly affect Earth's storms and other weather. People don't know historical weather patterns or much about meteorology and natural science.
“You don’t qualify for funding, but we’ll do everything we can to help you when you lose your home.” That’s insane!
Insurance Vs investment.
It politics.
One is an easier sell.
It’s the same if you are in rented accommodation anywhere. Their responsibility only starts when you are homeless.
Not really. With the history of erosion that swamped those communities now in the ocean and only a little over 3000 people sitting on private property essentially living all year in seasonal 2nd homes the community should be condemmed, all houses destroyed and everyone resettled procatively and end this nonsense once and for all.
They are free to move from their private property to somewhere else. Although there’s more behind it. Oh no, they are just caravan and holiday parks not normal housing.
Why should other people's tax pay for what was a prior known issue so these people can have a nice view from their window?
At Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, the sea is now 200 metres further out than it was in the 1960s, the pier now never has water under it. This is opposite to what we are being told.
Much of the coastal erosion and the Great Yarmouth extra depositing is caused by dredging to accommodate larger ships and that changes tidal flows.
Castle Harlech built at the sea 741 years ago, is now 2 miles (3218 metres) inland. That's 4.3 metres per year that the sea has retreated. I think the agenda is to tax our existence and "climate change" sensationalists are creating the justification for it
Climate change, climate change. Yes it's changing, it's always changing. The Sun, the largest contributor to climate change has just switched its magnetic polarity, something that happens cyclically. As a result and along with the normal solar cycles as we do not go around the Sun in a perfect circle, we are about to go into a cold era, which will be evident by 2035. Cold actually makes storms worse. Most flooding is down to the stupidity of planners building on flood plains.
Yes, these issues are more complex than the video makes them out to be.
My old flatmate was from Great Yarmouth. He didn't have too many great things to say about it, but I think he just had a rough childhood. East Anglia with its lowlands and broads is simply a bit different from many areas of coastal Britain where the sea has been attacking cliffs for millennia.
I briefly lived in Cambridgeshire as a foreigner. That was my tenth year in Britain and I've not been back since. It was becoming an increasingly unfriendly nation and the anti-immigrant sentiment exploded into Brexit soon after I left. I'm a highly educated white American and noticed it. I was hardly the primary target of all that ire.
I send kind greetings to beautiful East Anglia. It will outlive all the current mess that Britain has heaped on itself.
@grahambennett8151 Not to mention the thing that helped Brexit was the issue of illegal immigration, including the explosion of knife crime in London, a series of terrorist bombings and gang rape from the particular ethnic group in question.
The French aren't helpful, they are apparently ferrying these migrants to the shores where they get into rubber dinghies which have to be bought somewhere, which aren't suited for carrying that many people across the channel and because of ECHR, it forces us to rescue them but when they commit crime we simply can't punish them.
None of these politicians actually care, they like posturing more than fixing the core systems and making life better for everyone.
Is it true that The North Sea is dangerous because it is shallow?
Déjà vu?! We need your help. Sadly we had to re-upload this video which is not ideal. We spent 2 months reporting on this story and have put in a huge amount of time and effort in bringing it to you all. The way the platform works is when a video is released, it first shows it to our core audience and if you choose to click on it and watch a large portion of it, only then it’s pushed it out to a wider audience. We believe most of you guys, our core subscribers reading this in the first few hours/days, have likely already seen the video and thus might click away.
The biggest way in which you can help us and amplify this story is by watching it again, and then, engage with it as much as you can - every like, comment, and share is incredibly helpful. With the help of the people in Hemsby and their trust in our platform, we believe we have produced a really great documentary on the issue and we want to give it the best chance of success.
If you made it this far thank you for reading and supporting our work and we hope you enjoyed the video.
🙏
I knew that had to be it. When I saw it yesterday I thought it was criminal how little views in brought in for how much work yall did. I hope it does better this time!
One thing I would point out is UA-cam don't like re-uploads either, and doing it on the regular will hurt the channel.
rewatching the whole thing!
I will rewatch this time, but I think it’s fair to tell people why you had to reupload.
I've seen videos that were criminally low in views suddenly weeks or months later get picked up by the algorithm and get from 4 digit to 6-7 digit views, I can only hope yours will be one of those because this video and your other ones definitely deserve 7 digit views for sure. I will watch the whole video again today.
I'm from just down the coast from Hemsby and we also lost homes and part of a road to sea a couple weeks ago. Pakefield beach has been almost washed away. I walk there every morning and often take photos. The change in the last 6 months has been happened so quick, with a big noticeable difference. I'm shocked by the lack of government help to protect our coastline and the home alone it.
Our government never plan ahead as it would cost money, so they wait till it breaks and pay a relative an absolute fortune to fix it...might even give em a knighthood while they're at it.
You want them to go and fucking prop the entire cliff face up with steel beams or something? Create ugly, mile long sand dunes that will get swept away instead and need to be topped up every few years? In all honesty it's more concerning the government went completely batshit stupid and let people live this close to the cliffs. This shit has been happening for centuries and only after the 40s did the government start letting people just prop up entire new communities next to an ever changing cliff face or river
I used to work in Lowestoft at Broadland Sands, I left in November and my friend has just gone back for the weekend and even she said that so much of the rocks have fallen even just in a couple of months
I'm shocked that you believe the government can beat nature.
It's a natural process, no point is wasting money trying to fight nature.
I'm from Birmingham, I love travelling around the UK mostly for hiking and camping but I'm going to add Hemsby to my list of places to visit. Not necessarily for the beach, I'll buy some food, pay for parking and check out a place that needs a bit more attention.
NICE 😊
Bacton is 18 miles north of Hemsby, further along the same coastline. It too is suffering coastal erosion.
However, the Bacton Gas Terminal is based there, to receive gas from Europe.
I am sure coastal sea defences will be built there, as that site is part of the UK's Critical National Infrastructure.
And now, sadly, those homes have gone. Great video and editing
Oh!
I didn't know about all the extra stuff surrounding the council and the local MP, but I'd heard of the group trying to save the place. Great video guys!
I just want to say a few things about Hemsby
I used to visit Hemsby with my family for holidays every year. It really was a stereotypical British seaside town, and over the last 15 years it's changed massively. About 7 years ago there was a noticeable difference in the beach between the visits that we had (previous year: flat and sprawling, following year: the entrance to the beach was about 1m higher than the beach itself) however; this didn't seem to effect tourist number all that much as the beach was still accessible. My family and I would even walk down The Marrams to nearby Caister during our visits.
There is a couple of things I'd like to add to this that weren't mentioned in this video:
1) The red building next to the short stay car park opposite the Marrams is an RNLI station. I assume that they aren't operating out of there anymore and have moved their boat and crew to another station that still has access to the sea close by, but I am uncertain of this.
2) When a bit of shoreline is eroded it has to go somewhere, and in this case it seemed that it went further south, down to Great Yarmouth. As (during the same visit I mentioned earlier) we noticed that the pier at Great Yarmouth had significantly more sand under it, and a lot less sea.
It's a shame to see this happen, but it is unfortunately a consequence of the area and it's geology and geography. Also as I've had such fond memories of the place growing up. Maybe one day I'll take children of my own down there and tell them how it once was, but it's unfortunately looking like it's borrowed time for that to happen.
To anyone that made it this far: thanks for reading my comment on my connection to the place.
Good points, but also to mention that the construction of Great Yarmouth outer harbour appears to have caused the erosion of Hopton Beach, though this has been denied. So I do have to wonder what else might have caused the similar deposition of sand at Hemsby which built the dunes in the first place, to go into reverse.
This is terrible. A similar thing happened here in Denmark and my grandma was living in one of the affected areas, but her insurance paid her and her neighbors out so they could move.
Jullie Denen zijn ook niet de slimste hè, jullie moeten met een helm op fietsen omdat je bang bent dat je valt en je weet niet eens hoe je een dijk moet bouwen. Waarschijnlijk kan je dit niet eens lezen ook nog.
@@gaudetjajaJe hebt het buskruit ook niet uitgevonden. Je hebt geen idee waar je het over hebt.
@@gaudetjaja IIk kan het lezen, al was het '51 toen wij naar de UK emigreerde. Dijken worden in Nedeland gebout waar het zich loont. In the Fenland en North Lincolnshire ziyn er dijken genoeg, de engelse weeten wel hoe. Maar de hele kust van Lincolhshire tot de Thames te beschermen? Nederland zou daar ook een beetjy over nadenken.
these people literally choose to live here in the last 10-15 years, knowing full well the risks it entailed. No taxpayer money should be spent on these whinging fools. All of these communities should have all taxpayer funding withdrawn, and the land should be compulsory purchased at low market rates and then the residents resettled. Its ridiculous spending more and more money to prevent something which can never be stopped - the coast is erroding, its a stupid place to live.
In Nederland graven ze tegenwoordig stukken uit de duinen, de HELE kustlijn, om het drinkwater te laten verzouten en het achterland (hopen ze waarschijnlijk) te laten verzuipen en verkassen naar het oosten.
Thanks for this, very interesting! Im originally from Guernsey, Channel Islands. We get battered too. But thats just nature. Apart from that our beaches are empty (compared to the good old days when Guernsey was a holiday destination until the late 1970s - as Hemsby used to be), our beaches are all still in the same place. Cos Guernsey is made mostly of granite and we build a lot of our houses with granite. Not flimsy wooden bungalows on a sand dune. The problem with Hemsby is its coastline. Its just not made to last.
Put your foundations on rock not sand.common sense,...
@@brianaitchison6060 A 'House built on Sand' can be seen intact on the edge of the beach at Bude, Cornwall.
A Victorian (eccentric?) built a Mansion House, now the Council Offices, on the beach, and not a crack or a crumble visible anywhere, because the House was built on basically a big concrete boat, foundation, one solid lump of concrete, so for any movement of the sand around it, the house / building just floats along on it's concrete 'boat' ...Norfolk and Holderness are something else, of course, buildings on the coastline locations would still tip over onto the beach if they were built on lumps of concrete..
Strange for sure, to see a road in Holderness that heads for the sea, and then just disappears out of existence at the edge of the coastline - warning signs of course - and so a lot of history of the coastal erosion along this coast. ..At Hornsea: Rolston Musketry Training Camp, as it was in WW1, it was in use for weapons training in WW2, with three concrete towers by the coastline. Winston Curchill featured in a famous foto, there; posing with a Tommy gun, introduced from America, to be tested at Rolston - Adolf Hitler 'approved' of the pose, saying it made Churchill 'look like a Mafia man that he was' ..Soldiers training were posted to 2 of the 3 towers on the cliff top, and an RAF plane would then arrive and attack the one vacant tower. To teach soldiers the importance of getting communications information correct and up to date.
The three towers were rebuilt three times, during the war, retreating 3 times from the incoming sea / erosion.
You covered so much in this film and captured many of the issues we are trying to solve from many perspectives. I’m a researcher in this field, my focus is in North Norfolk but I often go to Hemsby at weekends and I’m working hard more generally to help find long term solutions to the inevitable changes we face. Thank you for making this film.
What on earth were you watching? 'from many perspectives'?
I used to go to Hemsby when I was a kid in the 70s and later worked on Pontins site in the 90s. I have been back during the last couple of years and its truly astounding to see how close the sea has come inland.
Answer: Don't build nearly in the sea! This happens all over the world.
Wow, very insightful story. The timing also proved to be impeccable, makes it feel almost documentary level quality. Great video you guys keep raising the bar
Great that you are giving these people a voice. Good job 👏🏼
A voice?
Given these people don't know they're being attack with weather warfare, which is true for the majority, they don't know either, that climate change is weather technology.
He or she is giving the criminals funding this weather& climate engineering technology a faked VOICE.
He's is selling it as climate change due to co2.
They're doing this to towns all across the world , but NOT in smart cities, you won't see this happening
to the richest elites living by the shore.
Weather and climate engineering technology is criminal when used to attack places and people, especially since
it can be used to mitigate storms but it's used against the majority to con them into believing it's due to co2
for carbon taxes and carbon credit.
I hope everyone watches this again. This is the kind of content I wish more journalists pursued, I know that it will never be as popular as hot button topics.
But, when discussing climate change or war it’s stories like this where we see practical, real world examples of what these larger topics look like. It’s the kind of thing that made VICE News so interesting early on and I should say Faultline is doing an exceptional job at that.
It's not really climate change. If you live by a river the same shit happens. The river moves, the cliffs erode. They're not something that stays forever and these settlements have been there for god knows how long. Some from well well before the 19th century and others set up right on the fucking cliffs getting upset when storms come along every year and the weak stone cliffs, chalk and softer variety's, collapse. The government here are fucking idiots. They allow you to build multi millions worth of homes by a constantly changing river or cliffside but if you put up a shed they'll fucking be on your ass over every little aspect of your own garden. I live in a valley of lowland Scotland. For time immemorial the rivers go up and down, the towns along then that were stupidly given the green light for council homes by the river get flooded almost every year. This wasn't an issue before the war, because before the war these places weren't allowed. They were reserved for farms where flooding would be detrimental to crops and livestock but not thousands of people and hundreds of thousands in property damage.
The climate changes four times a year so they’re not lying 😂
H.A.A.R.P
Yet in Spain, Mums beach has widened a good 20 metres out to sea and Roman ruins have been uncovered from the original sea line, buried by the sea for hundreds of years.
The issue is with the holderness coast is that the land is essentially borrowed. 12,000 years ago when the ice age was coming to an end and the glaciers that retreated glacial till was left behind building up the coast. But this stuff erodes very easy and at a rate of 2m a year. Its very complex
Further down the coast the land has grown- Wells Next The Sea is now several miles inland.
This is my first time watching the channel but this has been an incredibly informative and captivating watch! I love the genuine perspectives of real people and how you explore all angles of the information
Never been to the Norfolk coast. But I even remember as a child (40 something years ago) that the Norfolk coast was a very popular holiday destination in the 70s/80's & into the 90s. My mum even knew people back in those days who loved it so much they moved there. To see it all lost is tragic. I will visit one day. It's been on my places to go list for a while now. I think what's happening does put me off a little. But Norfolk always looks absolutely stunning. Thank you for sharing this
Excellent video. Mother Nature is a foe you can't beat. Such a shame for these people.
Unless you're Dutch
It seems like the good people of Norfolk could use another Sand Engine. It uses natural currents to grow beaches and strengthen the coastline using an artificial sandbank, which has also recreational purposes. It works fine in the Netherlands and it's much cheaper than traditional coastal defences.
I'm not a geologist or geographer by any stretch, but as someone that used to go there regularly: it seems that the sand from Hemsby has ended up at Great Yarmouth as the beach there grew massively around the same time that it shrank at Hemsby
You have to be careful with things like this. See how Hopton beach has been washed away since the Great Yarmouth outer harbour was built.....and see how the beach further down the coast is actually being built.....in Great Yarmouth, the pier is no longer in the sea and the sea wall is a long long way back from where the sea actually is.
A great piece of journalism. Keep up the good work. I hope the people of hemsby get a salvation, and soon.
True, assume that the sea currents go south to north. Built a large sand engine just south from the area were coastal erosion is a thing. Problem solved or at least made 80-90% less urgent. Unbelievable that British polticians and civil servants don't understand this. They must be stupid.
@@roodborstkalf9664 They are !
I love the way you edit and report on things!
It’s funny to me that all these places that are being eroded heavily are all places that aggregate dredging happens out at sea. This information is easy to come across with a google search for sea dredging maps but no one is talking about it and we are just told that it’s a natural process.
No, no, no. We're all told that it's due to anthropogenic climate change. i,e. That it's all our fault. What a load of bollocks!
They know what they are doin, land grab
Oh, really? How about the White Cliffs of Dover, and the Jurassic Coast in Dorset - which were being eaten away by the sea before the Romans invaded, 2,000 years ago? It IS a natural process, so take your damn tinfoil hat off and look at the historical and archaelogical evidence!
@@lindahughes2289 And you, like Harrison Fox, haven't got a damn clue what you're talking about.
I’ve seen maps from the middle ages. Large swathes of land in somerset, norfolk, suffolk, lincolnshire, essex, kent and hampshire were under the sea or tidal swampland. The sea returning to these areas is resetting the status quo.
A map of the Ice Age will show that everything in the North Sea used to be dry land. Your point?
@@Conclusius68 i have seen copies of the mediaeval maps. Show me the contemporaneous maps from the Ice Age , dear, then you would have hard evidence to back up your conspiracy theories.
@@lulabellegnostic8402Just get your Google out and google Dogger Land. The North Sea was mostly dry land because the water was contained in huge glaciers. Not a conspiracy, just science.
@@Conclusius68 A lot of land on the east coast of England is drained tidal wetland, as sea level rises those areas are going to return to this. however a lot of the areas people live on is not part of this.
@@Conclusius68 . . The ice melted - the sea levels rose 150 ft or more !. .
Doesn't sea defences in one place shift the focus of erosion downshore?
Would have been good to have some more context about the pros and cons of different options.
I remember reading in a local newspaper back when Great Yarmouth “Outer harbour” was constructed.
& there was mention of the environmental effects on currents and the sandbanks out there.
Makes you wonder if there has been an noticeable increase in erosion SINCE that was constructed. As Hemsby is only a few miles north along the coast! 🤔
Great series BTW. I very much enjoyed this video! 👏
This is a nightmare for these poor people. I can’t believe how many towns have just vanished off the map. As a coastal dweller in the US, I’m blessed that I’m far enough back from the cliff that I still have the view, but not the danger. Other than hurricanes. But it’s been 135 yrs. Since we had a hit. Just so sorry.
This is happening in a fair few places across the east coast, Happisburgh is also falling into the sea fairly rapidly. It's always happened here, a lot of the towns and villages he mentioned went to the sea quite a while ago. The difference is it's never happened close to as rapidly as it is now. And back when those other towns went, we didn't really have the knowledge or resources to stop it. We do now and our govt just doesn't give a shit.
@@ItsSpecialHands As noted, the government decided it would cost too much to build a comprehensive defence system to protect the UK against Climate Change sea level rise.. Careing isn't a consideration in the politics world of this country.
Amazing video. I’ve been to this coastline and this is the best and most accurate documentation of the resilience of these desperate communities. It really sums up the problem. I like that you got a scope of arguments as well
Between 15 and 20 years ago I was thinking of moving from Kent to Norfolk and arranged with a local estate agent to view a property in Hemsby. However, when I did some research I found that the area was subject to erosion and, although the property I was going to view was quite a long way from the coastline, I worked out that it could become much closer over say, a ten year period so I cancelled the viewing.
At that time though, and the reason I changed my mind was, that I had read that a lot of the erosion was being caused by contractors being allowed to dig up shale from the seabed for use in the building trade and this was causing the sand and earth to slip into the deep holes that this was causing just off the land. Such articles are no longer available on the internet and I can't be making this up because how would I have known that unless I'd read it somewhere? At the time I thought it must be the local council that was allowing this but I'm interested to see from this programme that the coastal area is partly privately owned and partly owned by the Crown Estates (the Royal Family). Was it these two owners who were allowing the shale to be mined from the seabed for the profit it would have been making? Nobody in this programme has reported seeing any of this shale mining taking place but could it be the case that most of the people who knew about have since died? It seems odd to me that nobody seems to know about this alleged shale mining which could have contributed heavily to this erosion.
It’s sad to see the second dune no longer! Spent many summer holidays in Hemsby playing amongst the dunes as a child… for the most part these were just holiday homes, the older buildings are pretty much sheds, some of which had outside toilets and showers.
And yet people moved in 15-20 years ago when it was already collapsing
But many of these homes are cheaper to buy so enabling those who retire on small pensions to have their own home, possibly for the first time and expected to live out their retirement and have clearly improved their homes. As one resident said, when they moved they were told it was eroding at 1m a year. But, because climate change has acelerated significantly over the last 5 years , they are now losing huge chunks of coastline at a time. Every system has its tipping point. It is only a matter of time before this is happening at many other places around UK and that is before we mention homes lost to flood waters or built on flood plains. The government has not recognised the impact of this long term and has not put a plan in place expecting 'the market' to solve the problem but what profit is there to be made for the market by protecting a few homes-none. There is no strategic thinking in UK. Britain's climate refugees.
What fascinates me is that people are still buying houses in a coastal area that has been eroding for centuries and acting like victims when their house falls into the sea.
Simple: Because the people selling those houses are telling the buyers, "Oh the rate of erosion means there will be no problems here for at least 100 years." Adn they base that on erosion and storm frequence _from 200 years ago._
But, Climate Change _is here _*_NOW._* 100-year floods and storms are now happening once or twice a decade. So that "yOu'Ll HaVe No PrObLeMs FoR __ years" needs to have _""_ divided by 10. Not the buyer's fault they're being lied to by people stuck in the 19th-Century.
The converse is happening here in the US, in the desert southwest. Droughts that used to be a few times a century are now _the new normal._ Yet people are using water like it's 1920 … which was an abnormally wet decade in the US southwest.
I've just started watching but wanted to thank you for making this video. I grew up with annual holidays to Hemsby at the Seacroft holiday camp. I've not been there since my friend who lived there passed away several years ago, and it is heartbreaking to see what has happened.
Coastal erosion has always been going on. The simple answer is don't buy or build your home too close to a coast where erosion is an issue. Just as you shouldn't buy or build your home on a flood plain if you're not keen on water flowing into your living room. It's not rocket science.
It’s not rocket science?? It’s barely basic science. It’s that rare commodity now days called ‘common sense’.
That's a really great documentary. Many countries around the world are experiencing similiar problems. My wife is from Jakarta, Indonesia. The future of her city is uncertain, because of the sinking city and rising water levels. The Dutch are also involved there to try to save the Indonesian capital.
It's a shame the British government is not acting quicker and trying to find long term solutions for that coastline, and especially for the residents of Hemsby which are running out of time.
Sadly, there is a finite amount of cash available nationally and our current government is too busy dishing out small fortunes to Rwanda in its insane policy of discouraging a few small boats carrying illegal migrants from crossing the channel instead of selecting the most urgent problems!
@@royfearn4345 even so...
how can justify spending over 40 miljon, to protect only some 3000 residents , for maybe 10 years top? before you would need to respend such an amount?
it's a natural process of decline on one end, and land growth an the other.. indeed seriously fastened by climate change.. witch mean, it's only gone speed up, and gonne need WAY bigger, way more expensive defenses withing 10 , 20 and 30 years time...
it's actually cheaper to move the whole town some km inwards that would give them at least 20 -30 years, that there new wooden homes would last..
building a dike in such a place makes no sense..
even the dutch have understood that now that can't hold up against the water everywhere, you have to choose places to let the water reclaim land too ..
I recall happy family holidays at Hemsby when our kids were of primary school age. The eldest is now a head of faculty at a secondary college, the youngest an accountant with the NHS. WE ALL REMEMBER HEMSBY as a vibrant family friendly place with a great beach. So sad it is being allowed to succumb to uncaring administration. Subscribed!
You are a ron mor
One possibility that wasn’t mentioned was Doggerland. Both sides of the North Sea are still experiencing crumbling and sinking. One gigantic sinkhole? 🤔
Its coastal erosion nothing more
@@garrymartin6474 which is how Doggerland / Doggerbank disappeared. Are you a geologist?
@@WaynesPokeWorldDoggerland disappeared at the end of the last ice age when the sea level rapidly rose by ~500ft.
These wooden shacks are falling into the sea because they're built on eroding sand dunes, rather than solid land.
There's no mystery here.
@@WaynesPokeWorld it disappeared because of the last ice age a huge inland sea flooded the Atlantic in USA what are you lol ?
@@incandescentwithrageThank God someone has more intelligence than a turnip. It’s frightening how easy the other people commenting are brainwashed by these edgy, young, hip documentary makers who are full of sh*te!
I first holidayed at Hemsby as a kid around 45 years ago and remember playing on that WWII concrete pillbox. It was actually in among the sand dunes back then. It used to be a loooonnnngg walk from where the lifeboat station is through the dunes and across what was a vast beach before you could dip your toes in the sea. Now it is almost lapping at the door.
Swallowed by the sea, great video, are you going to make one about the large areas of land in the Uk , Europe and globally that have appeared due to the sea receding over the last 1000 years?
@glenreddy1435 ... I didn't know that, where in the UK has land appeared please, I'm really interested?
@@Tidybitz Hi, there are many areas of coastline around the Uk where the sea has retracted, for example Pevensy castle, built as a sea defence castle, now several miles inland.
One area which will certainly entertain any budding historian, is “The American Corner “ an area of land in Hastings East Sussex, where the sea retracted, and an American claimed, and held the land , as an additional state of the Americas, until several years later the, the king decided enough was enough and took the land back under English sovereignty. This area is full of shops, restaurants and bars plus residential housing now days.
Also look up the changing maps of the cinque port towns . Good luck.
@@glenreddy1435 ... Thanks for that info.
@@glenreddy1435 I think they did touch up on that when the fella explained that even without climate change we'd see some level of this because the north is effectively rising and the south is sinking.
@@ItsSpecialHands Hi there, thank you for your comment, real truth I’m trying to point out is, there is no such thing as “without climate change”, as climatic changes are constant, since the dawn of time , the planet experiences noticeable shifts in short periods of time, and anything up to 5000 years, is a short period of time.
There is no evidence that we are experiencing anything out of the normal. If you compare change, to the lifespan of the average human it will , look very different than if you compare over a 1000 years, something most climate change experts refuse to acknowledge, you will form a much different picture.
Don’t forget the whole of the Uk was under a 3 mile thick ice glacier around 8000 years ago, the Sahara Desert was a rain forest at around the same time, Gobekli Tepe was a thriving civilisation 12000 years ago, in that short period, you wouldn’t recognise the planet today, especially if you focus on sea levels.
this is a familliar scenario to us dutch people right across the north sea. We did learn from erosion by letting the dunes grow which is a possibility for seaside towns like these as it creates a flood barrier and more beach in the long term. i hope some plan will be written up to save these places as i'm sure they're great tourist hotspots
Having grown up in Norfolk, this makes me so sad to see. We used to holiday here every summer during the 2000s as a kid. I stayed at Pontins and other holiday areas around Hemsby. It would be so sad to see it disappear.
Would you be happy if they put up loads of sea defenses and lost the beach as if you are THAT is what you need to tell politicians
Thank you so much for your video on this. I have so many fond memories of Hemsby, it sickens me that the government aren't doing anything, it's an absolute disgrace.
There are villages in Norfolk that were swallowed by the sea hundreds of years ago. There was a submerged church tower that had to be demolished because boats kept hitting it.
In the Netherlands we have the same problem with eroding dune beaches along the North-sea. It cost a lot of energy and money to supplement the sand by pumping water with sand onto the beaches before they get to the dunes. A new experiment is an artificial sand island that sits upstream of the eroding beach to have nature and flow supply the sand to counter the erosion. There is enough sand in the shallow north-sea to dredge-up for this purpose. We have an active ministry of "traffic and waterworks" (verkeer en waterstaat) that supervises these problems and contracts entrepreneurs that have these tools.
wow this is such a good video. I could watch it every day
Sad, sad individual
As the last ice age left the uk approx 10,000 years ago the land beneath already buckled by igneous activity began to tilt causing the South East area to rise exposing sedimentary deposits. Unfortunately sections of this were built on but with much of it falling back into the sea, many square miles of land have been reclaimed. What makes this worse is that this region is sinking year on year as the tilting action reverses due to homeostasis.
So well made! Great job!
Thanks a lot! 🙏
This land erosion has been happening for 60 years to my knowledge,when I was in the area as a teenager. Successive governments are well aware of he serious problem it is and have done next to nothing to stop it from destroying people's homes and lives.
It's been going on for centuries, Dunwich lost tracts of lands more or less overnight in the 1600's I think it was, when 9 parishes were lost, and a sand storm dropped tonnes of sand inland, theres loads of references on various history groups about how sand had ruined farmland, there's a time team program about it, it's the nature of that coast line all the way up to parts of the North East, holderness etc, at one time it was all connected to Europe via doggerland. Which was flooded out with rising sea levels after the last ice age ended, it's all mostly sand, and the jurassic parts of chalky lands from Dover & the seven sisters up to Hunstanton. Its such a "delicate" coastline so prone to the sea, government could spend trillions and not stop it I feel. Its very sad as its a lovely coastline.
Chalk downland from Kent through Sussex and into Hampshire was once millions of years ago was under the sea.
Governments aren't King Canute you know. It's nature. Furthermore, when you build a house, you do so on a sound foundation. Sand isn't a sound foundation. When people want to live close to the sea, this will inevitably happen.
People in the comments are saying all sorts of things as if something can be done. It can't. Just stop building on sand and when the storms come we will not have a problem.
such a well made video. loving this content
you covered a lot in just 22 mins. great work!
I understand this at a personal level but one has to consider whether it's really worth it to spend tens of millions to foritify a coastline that has eroded for hundreds of years.
thank you for this video. It is very well crafted and you brought out the human impact by your sensitive interviewing of those affected,
Great video. I hope the Hemsby folks get real help but it doesn't look like it. I am Dutch and I am very happy that water management is taken very seriously here. Even right now our investments pay off. The IJsselmeer, Markermeer and the big rivers have really high water levels, yet nothing serious happened thanks to our barriers and also the more recent mega-project 'Room for the river'. Along the rivers there are areas that can safely flood with only little preparation, to reduce the threat to the places we want to protect.
We were there in 1976 during the heatwave, you could not move in the swimming pool it was standing room only because everyone was in the pool trying to keep cool that summer, there was a lot more to the town back then than there is today, considering Hemsby brings in so much money every summer, you would of thought they would use that to help this town. It’s like they love the money coming in, but to hell with the town take what we can while we still can. With the amount of money that pours in each summer they could have built half a dozen erosion barriers in the past 30-40 years.
Hemsby is stuck in the early 80's. Its only been the last 3 or 4 years that shops there introduced card payment machines and still the shops have the same old tat year in year out
Places that rely on seasonal tourism are barely able to make ends meet. Doesn't matter how busy it gets on the busy days, buying an ice cream here and a bucket and spade there is barely enough to get them through winter, never mind huge projects to stop coastal erosion. Also don't forget that like Pontins, a lot of the money will be hoovered up by big businesses located elsewhere.
Sshhh… Heatwaves never used to happen. You’re messing with the narrative!
It's not climate change to blame but normal weather patterns over decades of the shoreline, changing due to storm erosion.
The UK is tipping over.
I have a strong memory of visiting Harlech Castle on the (opposite) Welsh coast, in the mid 60s. I saw a vivid painting, from the middle ages, of a violent storm thrashing the cliffs on which the castle stands. At the time of my visit, the castle was three quarters of a mile inland.
I was told at school in 1986, that the area i live in would be 15ft underwater by the year 2000, here i am almost 40 years later, living 500 metres from the English Channel, and the sea still hasn't risen by the speculated 30 feet they predicted by computer simulation.
However, higher temperatures, shrinking glaciers, more intense storms, rising seas, etc. have become as they were predicted. Also, I would love to see that prediction about 15 feet underwater. You see, climate change deniers are notorious for lying and/or using hyperbole.
I was told about a new ice age when I was at school in the 80’s. Still waiting.
kleimat sjeens
@@ptownRandy1 Climate is cyclical, I thought everyone knew that, man made climate change is fictitious government rubbish, I,m with Patrick Moore on this.
@@lindalaw5466 Didn't catch on did it !
This video was so well made and really good, earned a subscriber for sure
I live in WA state where we have several coastal communities suffering a similar fate. Much like Hemsby, one of my family's favorite places to visit on weekend trips, cabins located at Kalaloch, WA may need to be demolished soon because of eroding, encroaching coastline. There's even a famous landmark located nearby (the "tree of life" which is a tree seemingly defying gravity and supporting itself even as ground eroded beneath it... I've seen pics of it all over the internet). Sadly as climate change accelerates I think many of these communities may ultimately need to be relocated further inland. Great video as always.
I also live in WA (Western Australia) and the same is happening to many coastal towns here,
Sad to see
Amerikanen zijn ook niet slim genoeg om dijken te bouwen, of om dit te kunnen lezen
Just for some context: Kalaloch is in Washington state in the USA. It’s within Olympic National Park, an area of the world that some became familiar with thanks to the popularity of the Twilight series. Indeed, Kalaloch uses the same ZIP Code as Forks (the town in which Twilight was set), meaning mailing addresses there have Forks addresses.
In your part of the world, you'd be best building some giant tsunami towers, as they have done at schools near Ocean Shores. Whatever coastal erosion you get in the next 200 years will be nothing compared to what happens within minutes when the undersea Juan de Fuca plate slips and subducts further under the Olympics, most likely within the next 200 years. Bands of sand in coastal soils there show that M9 earthquakes from this slipping action and corresponding tsunamis have been happening every 300-600 years for at least the past 18,000 years. The last one was in January 1700.
This "Cascadia" coastal faultline runs from Victoria BC to the northern tip of California. FEMA estimates 12,000 people will die when the faultline slips. One of its officials famously has been quoted saying FEMA modelling shows that "everything west of I-5 will be toast".
If the Tree of Life somehow manages to hang on, it will most likely become part of a ghost forest, like the ones that can be seen there now, made up of white, dead tall trees that drowned in salty water when a previous tsunami rushed past them.
Where is the coastal erosion protection / large concrete blocks preventing that sand cliff collapsing?
Before climate change was invented, we were told that the British Isles are tilting along a North/South line. In Wales is a castle with steps leading down to a field which used to lead down to to sea. The sea is now half a mile away, and was considered proof of the tilt, lifting in the West and sinking is the East.
Spot on 👌
True but it is the speed of change that is the problem.
Harlech.
It took a thousand years
@@DM-vq8uxSo? The castle that is now 2 miles away from the sea, was built in 1283. That's not a thousand years
My family are from Great Yarmouth and part of Hemsby. Remember going to the holiday park as kids and the run down to the beach at Hemsby. My family had a caravan down near great Yarmouth. It was such a lovely memory. I haven’t been back there since a child that is such a shame.
Climate change is a natural phenomenon. The British islands were once a part of mainland Europe. But then there was no manmade pollution or cars or petrol nor diesel.
Don’t believe the money driven propaganda about green revolution and manmade climate change.
The rise and fall of sea level is a natural process.
Also ignorance is a given, education without indoctrination has to be earned.
People are constantly moving, there are so many coastal cities underwater from thousands of years ago.
Never become attached to a piece of land.
Love people not things.
Land is to be used, material possessions are to be used, tools are to be used and serviced but not to be attached to.
Expecting the weather to be always nice is similar to expecting to be in the wild and meet up with a hungry bear, wolf or lion and expect the predator animal not to try to eat you.
I live in sweden and far down in sweden close to denmark my onkel had a cabin about 30 years ago not so far from the beach,,,30 years later this cabbin is gone every thing there is wather.....if you compare this village "Hemsby" right over the sea is sweden/denmark and we also see the different how land disappears more and more...I hope they solve this in any way so they can save this village and houses etc...By the way Hemsby sounds very much like swedish.."BY" is Village in English "HEM" is Home in English so it sounds like "Home village"...sorry for bad speling
The sand is a big hint.
Sort of means it was under the sea once and looks like it will be again unless something drastic is done soon.
That's pretty irrelevant. There are sand dunes from the sea floor in midstate new york, but there's no scenario where the sea will recaim them for millennia.
Not comparing like with like
There are a few movies though where NY is under water
I wondered if you’d bring up the Dutch. They have so much engineering, including natural methods, that work so well in protecting their country. Such an inspiration that really should be replicated.
At one point, these dunes were built, as they currently are in Great Yarmouth just down the coast - the sand was taken there via longshore drift, presumably. What changed that instead of dunes being built, they started being destroyed. Hemsby was clearly reliant on the deposition of sand from further up the coast....places that have now seen some sea defences built, changing the patterns of erosion there. For every action there is an opposite reaction...is it possibly that Hemsby is suffering now due to other sea defences as Hopton's beach has washed away since the Great Yarmouth outer harbour has been built? It is far more complex than just piling up rocks and building a wall, IMV....
People would rather continue to push the climate change agenda as it's far more fashionable at present. But what you suggest is a far more likely cause for sure. As you say every action as an opposite reaction, here I feel we are seeing that in action.
Climate change driven super intense storms wiping out towns stable and safe for almost a millennium heart-breaking socially culturally historically and the local people facing losses that one day or another wait for most of us…
We cannot save everywhere, but we can do much more to look after those affected.
As government is deciding it's not worth supporting these regions, it should instigate strict planning restrictions preventing further development and a national insurance scheme to indemnify (at a reasonable premium) those whose homes are at risk.
Basically, it's crash or soft landing and the government is choosing crash.
How hard can it be to lay a few boulders
@@michaelthompson679 Been tried, just down the coast at Caister there was a full sea wall. All destroyed by the sea.
@@michaelthompson679 The boulders are a temporary solution. They might give protection from the regular waves, but not from storms, that have higher waves than the boulders go up. Also the boulders will sink down into the beach, so they need to be rebuilt from time to time (maybe every decade, maybe more frequently).
Another problem is that if you stop erosion at one point, it will go faster next to it. In a century or so Hemsby will become an island, making it even more costly to protect. The solution would be to protect the entire coastline of England, but that is just not feasible (there is not enough boulders to eventually dump into the sea).
It's been like this since as far back as I can remember. We've always has erosion issues on the East Coast. It's mainly to do with tides moving the sand north
Up here in Angus., £16.4 million pounds was spent on river flood defences in Brechin. That scheme protected 150 properties from the installation year in 2015. It lasted 8 years before failing in 2023 with Storm Babet. A £100000 scheme per property and not fit for purpose. It goes to show why some communities crying out for defences aren’t going to get them: The prospective property to be protected isn’t worth the protection and the efficacy of the proposed protection isn’t known against future storms. The sad fact is that climate change is going to completely change much of our land and society.
And people just don’t get it
@@opaqueentityNo, you don’t do you?
@@karensims9817 nope I do. It’s not worth the cost in some places. But feel free to do a gofundme to get the money required if you think there’s enough interest.
I think the interesting bit about Hemsby is that it’s all about people living in what are basically chalets and the area behind them? Holiday parks. It’s not the same as other places where there’s real housing
Great documentary mate. I kitesurf along the east coast from cleethorpes to Norfolk. Heartbreaking to see the coastline disappearing.
And the sad truth is the area was full of millionaire homes or near a royal home more would have been done to protect the Coastline. Unfortunately, our government and planners need to be more aware of what naturally happens in areas and stop allowing buildings in areas that have flooding or the land falling away. Maybe it's about time the government moves the town or maybe put a rock wall barrier along the beach and make a larger beach to protect the land.
When I was a child I used to go to Hemsby where my Grandfather owned a beach shack. I had many lovely holidays at Hemsby, so this news is a shock to me - 60 years later...
This really upset me greatly. Although I am 58 and from London, I spent a great deal of my childhood as a Cub Scout hiking around Suffolk and Kent.
I am ashamed of the UK government's treatment of the people and the land in question.
Despite the difference in size of the coastline between ourselves and the Netherlands, they appear creative in trying to protect their country from erosion, we by contrast are indifferent or just do not care.
From memory a decision on the upgrade or replacement of the Thames Barrier will be required by 2040.
A documentary from five or six years ago detailed how it must be opened hundreds of times a year to avoid areas of London and upstream being flooded.
The point is, I can see this being a priority but coastal areas will be said to be not worthy of protection.
We have to be honest. The UK is no longer a wealthy country.
It was afforded the opportunity to be rich when it found North Sea oil but instead of saving the money like Norway, it chose to spend it on social security and lower rates of tax. The social security was necessary because we chose to close so called old industries and privatize many the state industries.
We do not have the money nor do we have the imagination of the Dutch to attempt things such as dredging the sea floor and installing under barriers to calm the waves.
Yeah I pretty much agree with everything stated above.... I am from Withernsea area in East Yorkshire,, our erosion is as bad if not its worse. The gov could do so much, its not impossible ,,if the Dutch can do it why cannot we....
I live in Norfolk and I can tell you Norfolk county council is one of the councils that waste a lot of money on stupid things which could be put to better use like sea defences. They are only interested in protecting the bigger towns like Wells next to sea , Cromer, Kings Lynn and Great Yarmouth due to their size but they do seem to forget that with the current rate of erosion in the nearby villages on the Norfolk coast these major places will end up being islands as the unprotected areas will just disappear.
I will wonder how long the Norfolk broads will last as that is another tourist destination which also happens to be below sea level and if those sea defences get breached the sea can go as far inland all the way places like Thetford and the fens which is reclaimed marshland. This has happened in 1953 and if you compared the sea levels of today to 1953 the disaster waiting to happen will be far worst. People forget that a lot of Norfolk is in fact flat . and below sea level.. I should know because I live on the Suffolk/ Norfolk border near Thetford and the Royal Ordnance Survey people have marked a sea level line on the side of my garage, which officially my property is a foot below sea level.
Great film and very informative. Sad to see so many homes under threat. However, there was no real discussion on a solution. Rocks at the base of the 'cliff' may save homes above, but not the beach. Is there a solution? Be good to hear what the ideal solution / flood defence is. I am not sure how you beat the sea? The cost line is convex in shape so a Dutch style barrier would not work that I can see? Be good to hear if any experts in teh field reading this have some proposals. Nonetheless, as the saying goes, 'An Englishmans home is his castle' - that castle may be made of bricks and mortar, it may be a narrow boat on a canal, or a wooden built chalet, but they are ALL homes and should be treated equally. I do not think there is a solution to save the beach, but authorities should treat all homes equally. I feel so sorry for those affected.
Please take a look at Happisburgh guys, they are suffering there too and have lost tons of land and homes.
The extremely poor geology means that errosion protection is impossible it's that simple. Even the Dutch needed bedrock to build defences on when they exist you can pump sand as a filler so quoting Dutch technology is a bit off here. Sand you can only plant dune grass which here is not done because the dunes are full of private housing.
not impossible to do it just with sand,
there is a Dutch channel called zandmotor with videos in english
Why don’t they use Roman style concrete? The water makes the mortar expand and fill the damaged parts. One of the reason most Roman buildings are still around today without constant repair.
Same reason we can't return to the moon... allegedly today's technology isn't as good as it used to be 😂
You can't beat mother nature
my mother passed away there while we were on holiday , it was such a beautiful place the beach was always busy and noisy. we spread her aches there : what a special place
Dunwich was devastated by coastal erosion in the middle ages. What did the Tories do? Nothing!
I was standing with my friends on the beach at Hemsby 5 days before Xmas and had been there in the May, the difference was scary how fast the dunes had gone.....
Sorry , not being horrible, and yes it’s sad, but it’s a bloody reality, it’s a shore line, what do you expect !!
Greetings from Amsterdam ❤️
Someone pointed out before that Tom Scott did a similar video two years ago about Covehithe which is about 30 miles south of Hemsby and similarly doomed. I like yours better because you took the time to talk to the locals.
Tom didn’t need any input from the locals as Tom is the mayor of Covehithe
He is also the mayor of Hemsby
Respect for your work. Dankeschön!
Super video! I'd've been interested to hear a touch more on the geography of sediment cells in this context. I've only a (half-remembered) A-level understanding, but adding in lots of hard sea defences can worsen beach erosion, only protecting the dune edge. That suggests, from my layman perspective, that Hemsby will still lose its beach and much of its tourism despite expensive hard defences like a sea wall in place.
Maybe softer defences or more indirect methods would be a more sustainable solution? Like encouraging sand dune succession with hardier vegetation, the construction of an artificial reef or sandbank to reduce wave energy further from shore and promote sediment deposition, or maybe adding groynes to catch sediment removal (if longshore drift is an issue here). Just a thought if you ever do a follow-up video or something similar. Although another difficult aspect is that these home-owners need help now, not after various studies have been completed & published.
It is truly shocking to me that timber-framed houses don't qualify as permanent homes under government regulation, especially as we try to find more sustainable building materials than concrete. These people need help, & at the very least they need to have a stable insurance and relocation program available to them. I wish the government wasn't being so wobbly on their climate policies.
Some very good points. As for the houses, I believe most of them are leasehold properties so it would be for the landowner to deal with that, but sadly the video doesn't touch on that as much as I would have liked it to. And also to note that there are some of these homes for sale on Rightmove for £100k!
The very rich property owners built the sea defence walls to stop erosion over a hundred years ago and it works well in Blackpool
I live in Hull. I have never seen any flooding here. I've lived here since 2013, but have heard stories. Kingswood is a floodzone but they keep building on it. Lots of funding going to that area.
Used to go to Hemsby every year on holiday as a kid, didn't expect to find a UA-cam video about it! I'm 28 and even the changes from when I was a kid to now are insane
You can't fight erosion and rising sea levels, especially when it's multifactorial. The only solution is to relocate the community miles inland.
The UK governments do not seem to value the land we have, and seem more interested in diverting public funds into private hands rather than protect our valuable coastline. The Netherlands however believe in and have succeeded in land reclamation on an industrial scale. It puzzles me why our UK governments place so little value in our greatest asset, the land under our feet. My own area of East Yorkshire is the fastest eroding coastline in the UK, so my town will eventually be lost to the sea aswell, if no action is ever taken.
Maybe I’m a dum-dum, but there seems to be no economic incentive to save this town. Fact 1: The beach is what feeds the local economy. Fact 2: Those huge boulders that are being put in place to protect the houses from further erosion eliminate the possibility of beaches being there. These two facts cancel each other out economically. So even if the local authorities start to be proactive and help the residents, Hemsby won’t become a tourist destination again.
In Sydney Australia, there's an area prone to coastal erosion in occasional storms, now becoming more frequent.
The council refused to allow development on tbe sandy strip on tbe beachside of tbe main road, but developers appealed through the State and got allowed to build there.
But now it is council stuck with deciding how to manage it after most of people's backyards disappeared a few years ago. Including a swimming pool recently installed which engineers told the owner would be OK as storms were once in 100 years ans they'd recently had their storms. So much land disappeared, rhe pool stayed intact- except it had moved entirely on to thr Beach at a weird angle (& no backyard to put it back on).
The council wanted to get rid of the houses, like what's happening in Hemsby, but residents decided to fund building a seawall themselves. Council agreed and chipped in 10% of thr enormous cost.
Heaps of locals objected to the wall, as they thought it would prevent thr Beach ever replenishing. There's absolutely kilometres of beach on either side of the eroded bitz so i guess council isn't bothered.
So the town is built on a 100 foot thick sand dune. Should tell you something.
Annual sea level rise is around its average over 10,000 year.
Storms are weather, not some fictitious climate change.
Government should have spent money as the Dutch did on proper sea defences.
Sad people are losing their homes.
There have always been big storms in October in U.K.
I live about 10 minutes away from Hemsby. Its been totally abandoned by anyone who could do anything to save it, its insane. The local MP Brandon Lewis just does not care - he was even the secretary of state for Northern Ireland for 2 years. Northern Ireland! No wonder he didnt care when his more "important" job was as far away from his actual constituents as humanly possible. By now its pretty obvious hes fully in the Westminster bubble, only really pretends to care about us when its time for winning votes again. The local council has just shrugged its shoulders and decided saving Hemsby would be too expensive without even bothering to consider its valuable position for tourism makes it worth spending the money to save it. Its a genuine shame what has been done to Hemsby, its an absolutely lovely place, and is just actively being allowed to die
Maybe things would get done if Parliament was rebuilt in, say, Hemsby? They can fund the Thames Barrier, maybe if politicians lived and worked on the edge they'd have a more positive approach to real people's problems?
How valuable is Hemsby? Seriously? That bloke mentions £100 million. From what?