UKC

Not a day for Demo Route!

youtube.com/watch?v=VfZRh8bjvv8&

In reply to ChrisJD:

I was there a couple of months back when the resultant spray was bigger than this and we noticed that Superjam, Dolphin Crack etc was actually bone dry! But yep, not Demo Route.

In reply to ChrisJD:
I'd love to have been there


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=726501010693881&set=a.455804751...

In reply to ChrisJD:

Wow - pretty humbling stuff to see waves 20m above the already 30m routes.

In reply to ChrisJD:

It's going to be interesting to see how much damage it causes. All that backwash coursing down the cliff top will be causing quite a bit of erosion, apart from the effects on the actual routes. The hydraulic effects of non-compressible water being forced into cracks will alter a few routes I'd imagine.

In reply to Rog Wilko:


The hydraulic effects of non-compressible water being forced into cracks will alter a few routes I'd imagine.

Yes, yes yes but what's it ever done on grit?

In reply to Rog Wilko:

How unusual are these sort of waves? We've had some big waves in Pembroke this winter, but nothing that I haven't seen before. You do get route changes such as the demolition of Yankee Doodle or the massive rockfall at St Govan's some years ago, but I'm not even sure that these are associated with particularly large waves rather than a continued battering from averagely large winter waves.

In reply to John2:

Pretty unusual, I think, although I don't go to Sennen that often, and did once see waves crashing half way up Chair Ladder.

One of our children was telling us of how waves at Polzeath this week have piled right up the beach and over the road, taking a van with them at one point and dumping it on the bank beyond. I have never seen waves go that high there, where there is normally a car park on the beach itself.

In reply to John2:

Not that unusual for Sennen really, it's very exposed. I photographed a larger wave over the headland just before the 'St Jude's' storm and Longships was also completely swamped that day. Still, even some frequency throughout a year doesn't diminish just how crazy these waves are.

The really big deal down here has been the extent to which more sheltered (relatively speaking) areas have taken this sort of battering too. Cafes getting wrecked at Fistral, building demolished at Portreath, the whole sea front swamped by a tidal surge at Perranporth, all coupled with the regular flooding spots elsewhere in the more sheltered locations. Pretty much every stretch of the Cornish coast has been affected. I imagine it's the same elsewhere on Western coast too.

In reply to mbh:


Hehe, nicely contradicted each other there. Perhaps you're right and it's just that they've just not been that unusual over the course of this past 3 months or so.

It's mad. I went for a rather windy walk to Lower Sharpnose yesterday afternoon to see if the fins were still there(they were) and the cliff top by GCHQ before you descend to the top of the cliff proper was covered in spume. That's about 450' above the sea!

In reply to Tom Last:

mbh >Pretty unusual, I think, although I don't go to Sennen that often, and did once see waves crashing half way up Chair Ladder.

>Not that unusual for Sennen really, it's very exposed. I photographed a larger wave over the headland just before the 'St Jude's' storm.....

OK, just because you have a camera and actually go there...

In reply to Tom Last:


Thank god for that! Do keep checking...

In reply to mbh:

Hehe, it was still rather surprising though. I thought I'd have to stand above the cliffs to get a decent shot, but I ended up taking pics from above Gwynver!

In reply to Jon Stewart:



Hmm, well the thought did occur to me that it wasn't actually over, as the 30' sets kept rolling in as far as the eye could see. They're end on to the swell though, otherwise they'd never have lasted in the first place. Reckon they'll be alright.

In reply to ChrisJD:

Thanks for sharing, I used to live in Sennen, still have many friends there, and was back there in November.

In reply to Tom Last:

We can always glue them back, they do that in the Peak quite a lot.

In reply to Jonny2vests:



Might as well take the opportunity to rearrange them a bit first.

The stepped overhangs of Clawtrack/Lunakhod, the roofcrack of The Smile & the fantastic vdiff slabs of Fay and Break on Through etc...

A fair bit of rock 'damage' elsewhere

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25639777

In reply to ChrisJD:

The thing with this storm is that it was combined with big spring tides. We've certainly had similar strength waves before, but it's not often they combine with big tides which have resulted in waves hitting higher up the shore than usual. The relatively hot summers in the early 2000s combined with the cold snaps of the past couple of winters he changed the flora on the cliffs and accelerated erosion, and this storm has simply taken advantage of the weakened clifftops. Man-made structures have suffered because decreases in goverment sea defence maintenance spend have increased vunerabilities - cracks haven't been pointed up and the sea has simply exploited those.