Porlock Bay. Late September.  Interviewing the local historian and fisherman Derek Purvis about his observations of the changing coastal landscape of Porlock Weir.  All went well until Derek switched the engine off and we started to roll in the swell.  Alex and I were very keen to get the interview in the can before sea sickness overcame us!  We did it in time.  Derek was great.  I learnt more about the dynamics of this part of the Somerset coastline in half an hour with Derek than I had done trawling through the official reports and strategy documents.  And dynamic it certainly is.  To feel the current of water running back into the sea as the tide recedes from Porlock Breach is truly something to behold.

Porlock Bay 1891 - Charles Napier Hemy

Just completed the first interview for a film about coastal change in Somerset with Philip Ashford, a wonderful maritime historian. Crunching across the vast shingle bank at Porlock he took us back two hundred years and explained how the road and several cottages had been swept away in winter storms. As placid as the bay looked, I began to visualise the corrosive power of the sea.  Further on we came to the famous Porlock breach where an overnight storm had punched a vast hole through a twenty foot high shingle bank and flooded the marshland behind it. Later that afternoon the cameraman Alex Butter and I interviewed one of the local fishermen.  Had he noticed any changes in his time as a fisherman?  ’Well I’ve been fishing out in Porlock Bay for forty years, but in the last ten years I’ve noticed the sea has become a lot more violent and unpredictable’.  You can line up all the climate change deniers that you like, but one person with local knowledge will skewer their complacency.