A disappointingly cloudy day today, but mild with no wind. After breakfast, we set out to walk north east along the shore, forsaking the tarmac'd section of coast path for a track along the sand dunes and then on the beach itself as the tide was a long way out. There are remains of concrete structures in the first half mile of beach from the harbour, but it's hard to identify what they were part of.
A history board at the edge of the harbour told of blast furnaces extracting zinc, copper, silver and lead from ore imported in the 18th-19th centuries from Cornwall, and then as demand increased, from South America and Australia into the 20th century. As metal separating and refining technologies evolved, so the industry expanded, also with a variety of other products derived from these metals. The last of the smelters closed in 1910.
Coal from mines in the nearby Gwendraith valley was mined to feed refinery furnaces along the coast as far as Neath, but steam coal exports, generated most income and larger scale metal refineries developed further afield closer to where mineral ore and coal were found near each other.
After world war two, new energy demands let to an electrical power generating station being built on the coastal plain, but this lasted only from 1954 to 2004, by which time it relied on imported coal, as Cynheidre colliery, Europe's largest and last anthracite producing mine had closed in 1989. Industrial sites were cleared and natural ecosystems restored. It's only when you look at nineteenth century photos and engravings that you get some idea of how industrialised the Carmarthenshire coastal plain was back in those days.
Further along the beach, a mile and a half from the harbour we came across a couple of hundred metres of rocky outcrop, rising from sand-dunes along the shore. The rocks were hard carboniferous structures and the sea had hollowed out the layers of coal sandwiched between layers of harder shale. This is the western extremity of the South Wales Coal Field, which is tilted at an angle and its upper layers surface here, whereas the Eastern Valleys these layers are hundreds of metres underground. Alongside this modest five metre cliff, a strange circular structure on stilts made of concrete stands in the sand on the shoreline. Was it the remains of a military coastal defence installation? Its design and construction didn't seem quite so ancient. I googled a suitably worded enquiry and found an article explaining everything.
The platform housed an experimental wind turbine built in the 1980s, subsequently demolished. At that time it wasn't on the shore but some distance behind the tide line. Since then, about six metres depth of sand has been washed away and the shore line has moved inland, to just behind where the rocky outcrop stands. It too has eroded over the years. I guess that much of that sand has been washed further down the estuary, constituting the flat sand banks visible at low tide, contributing the silting up of Burry Port harbour's entry. Sea defences were built up in the last century with residual furnace slag, making up banks of coloured pebbles on some stretches of nearby beach, but much heavier blocks of stone are now needed to keep the shore line stable, and more again will be needed with coming sea level rises. The seaside landscape will change again in the century to come.
We walked back to the town and decided to have lunch at Nik the Greek's restaurant. It wasn't terribly busy, except for one large party ahead of us, and it took more than three quarters of an hour for our meal order to be delivered. I asked for a glass of Greek Merlot, and when I sniffed before drinking it smelled of mould and tasted disgusting, undrinkable. I don't recall when I last sent back a glass of wine like that. The waiter evidently knew nothing of about wine and thought it was simply a matter of taste, even when Clare tasted it and grimaced with disgust. My guess it that an opened bottle was stored incorrectly and got contaminated. The replacement glass tasted the way it should. Apart from that the food was good and went down well, as by nearly two o'clock, after walking, we were really hungry.
Later in the afternoon we went for another walk along streets running inland. Then we searched for a tea room or café for a drink, but by six, all were shut and the pubs were opening, so we went back to the house for supper, and a quiet evening. Ruth's weekly Morning Prayer text email arrived, so I spent the rest of the evening preparing it and a reflection ready for recording tomorrow.
In last night's late news, reports of rioting after a fatal collision between car and electric scooter on a street at the top end of the Parish of the Resurrection Glanely, where I stood in for Parish Priest Jan at the midweek Mass last Wednesday. As damage to police cars was involved, I wondered how much their presence contributed to an escalation of a tragic incident to serious public disorder, as happened in Saint Paul's Bristol on April 2nd 1980.
Police are highly trained and experienced in handling every kind of difficult situation, but the unexpected can happen which is outside the bounds of what officers on the scene are able to manage well. They can't cope and things go wrong. I thought of Jan, fresh back from holiday this week, and emailed her straight away.
Detailed investigation of the incident has yet to be carried out officially but a Sky news reporter got an interview with a someone close to the bereaved families which suggested that they way they were dealt with at the scene was what sparked off resentment against the police. Whether or not this is corroborated in due course remains to be seen, but I do know that shock waves from this incident will impair police community relations for some time to come.
Two teenagers were killed larking about on a scooter, both young enough to have been christened by Jan, if they were christened at all. She's been interviewed on radio and TV today. There'll be more to come and the attention will make life harder for her, on top of the superb work she does on top of her conventional ministerial work of running a community youth orchestra. I feel for her and wish there was something I could do to help.
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