Country Diary: Tetbury

The publication last month of the National Trust report, Shifting Shores - living with a changing coastline, attracted a lot of attention and hit the spot for me. The report is concentrated on the Welsh coastline, of which the trust holds one-sixth in stewardship, and two of the specific sites dealt with, one on the Gower and the other in Pembrokeshire, are places to which I have been in the last year.

On the Gower, the already accreting shoreline at Llanrhidian Marsh was shown to me by Sian Jones, the area's National Trust property manager. We also took in the high headland behind Rhossili strand on that occasion, when a fine group of half a dozen choughs came wheeling up the steep slope to greet us. Allowing for the effects of global warming, the assumption is of a 1 metre sea-level rise by 2100. This involves many coastal sites losing land by erosion, and losses of as much as 200 metres from the current high-water mark. Some human habitation is threatened and, even more so, natural habitats supporting wildlife populations. The important conclusion is that the best response is to go with the flow, not to build hard sea defences which only deflect the problem elsewhere. So, although uncomfortable and painful, adaptation to inevitable change is the recommendation the trust will follow as the coastline evolves. Coastal dwellers face an uncertain future, but the example of King Canute finds no favour. Already there is experience of re-routing coastal footpaths and, a splendid stretch of the Pembrokeshire coast showed early work to this end. And that is a pretty hard stretch of rocky coast too; softer sandy stretches will be showing the effects of inevitable change earlier in the timescale.