devon sea storm

Here is a short film that I made in February of one of the many winter storms that came through here. It turned out to be the one that did most of the damage to the South West, washing away the trainline at Dawlish, amongst other things. I've never seen the water do this before, it is like a sort of windborne sea. I did move up to the other shelter seen in the video to try to get some film closer to what we are looking at here, but it turned out to be a bit of a daft place to try and film from, what with the sea going under the hut and conditions being a bit unpredictable, so I left it at this shot.

What was surprising was the amount of people who insist on driving up and down the front in these conditions. I heard of at least one four wheel drive that managed to remove the sump from underneath their vehicle by driving over one of the many large rocks that were thrown across the road. I suppose that my actions could also be seen as a bit reckless, but I am quite careful and have a pretty good sense of preservation at these times.

One of the dangers that goes a bit unappreciated with the waves crashing against sea defences is that it's not just water that gets thrown up, but actually a lot of stones and rocks, this is what does the damage. The film is a bit long at about four minutes and forty seconds but this was to demonstrate that the conditions were not just momentary.