Low tide cycle at Tyninghame...

Another low tide, last Sunday morning, and a cycle at Peffersands, along the concrete road to Scoughall (pronounced `Skoal` as in the Scottish Lager), and onto the beach north of the Peffer estuary - note there are two Peffer burns and their estuaries in East Lothian, both from a spring to the North of East Fortune (near Congalton), the westerly flows into Aberlady Bay, this the easterly at Ravensheugh, or Peffersands, depending on source of map...

WW2 `Coastal Crust` remains, this a check point in the row of tanks blocks now mostly buried in the dunes along the coast here...

A few are visible, disturbed by high seas...

 The beach was covered in heaps of seaweed washed in the last couple of high tides...

Riding around the seaweed on the low tide exposed rocks,  here covered with sand recently moved with the Autumn swells starting to come in...

To the north of the Peffer estuary a new dune system has been forming over the last two years, not as big as the growing dunes (also new) on the south side of the Peffer estuary but again Marram and other vegetation are binding them together and the wind is doing the rest...

None of this was here at this height a few years ago, and well above the highest tides unlikely to be washed away anytime soon.  For all the news of coastal erosion there are plenty examples of the coast growing in places like here...

Song riding these growing dunes, Song is `Aquarius` by Boards of Canada


Low tide cycle; Peffersands, Sept 2019 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.



Across the Peffer, and across the wide exposed sands, and it got me thinking how changed this beach would look in WW2 where  the dunes were lower and the high tide line would be covered in rows of Anti tank concrete blocks, Machine gun pill boxes, and control bunkers that were linked by telephone to co ordinate defence of this prime landing area for gliders or landing craft within 25 miles of Edinburgh and importantly the port of Lieth for docking shipping...

Remains of an Anti Glider pole, the base still intact, these were laid out either in lines or one per acre...

All the information you need about the 1940 Coastal Crust defences can be found in this book, a fascinating read which shows all the defences including the standardised building plan of types of bunkers and machine gun posts - referred to as pill boxes...

And here the beach is listed as being a minefield...

Quiet today it must have looked quite a different site in 1940 until the end of hostilities in 1945 when after all mines and explosives would have to be removed before re opening to the public...


More soon...