Diminishing: Coastline of East Yorkshire.

I am drawn back to the changing shape of the East Yorkshire Coastline often in recent years. More of it is lost to the sea each year, as the boulder clay, which makes up much of the land, breaks up, is vulnerable to erosion. In Roman times, the coastline lay five miles out to sea. On a clear day, when you look out east across the North Sea, given that you are already at some height on the cliff top, the point at which your eyes conjure the horizon is roughly how far the coast was then. Towns, villages, hamlets, topple from the edge, as the boulder clay on which they stand gives way. Writing in his 1912 The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast, Thomas Sheppard chronicles the 30 settlements that have been lost or relocated since the Doomsday book was compiled. There have been more since. And there are others too, waiting their turn, as the edge moves ever closer. There is a fascination to them as they quietly await their fate. In some places, half-abandoned farmsteads with dilapidated outbuildings and obsolete machinery, rusted tin shacks and the shells of old cars litter the area. In others, like Mappleton, there is an orderly neatness about the place. A business as usual sense to the pretty window boxes and net curtains. There is a sense too in Mappleton of being favoured: at the end of the strip of road tapering to the beach, giant boulders stand, giving some protection against the sea. Other places have been left to their own fate. Roads come to a sudden jagged end. Homes are abandoned....