They that go down to the sea in blow-up flamingoes...

What is it about Rhyl and inflatables? Rhyl, as regular readers may remember, was where a mother-and-son duo aboard an inflatable rubber ring were fished out of the Irish Sea by the long-suffering RNLI a few years ago and every summer since has brought more examples of pneumatic foolhardiness.

The latest occurred last week, when lifeboats were called out to look for a child who had 'fallen from an inflatable flamingo' some 400m from the beach. According to witnesses, the deflated bird retrieved from the water during the search (the RNLI web page helpfully includes a picture) was originally part of a flotilla of giant blow-up toys which included a 'white flamingo' (or possibly a swan?), a unicorn and a slice of pizza.

While there is no shortage of parents who, having reproduced, appear to be attempting to remedy the fact by casting themselves and their progeny adrift on inflatable toys in in an offshore breeze - the prevailing winds at Rhyl head more or less straight out to sea - and an outgoing tide (the flamingo call-out came an hour and a half after high water), this motley collection surely qualifies for special mention (or possibly an Arts Council grant).

This story comes only a few weeks after reports that the Rhyl lifeboat crew, called out to a small inflatable dinghy in difficulties in an offshore wind, found something strangely familiar about the situation:

The two people in the vessel were immediately recognised as the same ones the crew had been called to on three previous occasions in the last month. 

Although the boat was equipped with an outboard motor, the engine lacked sufficient power to counteract the forces of wind and tide. One can imagine that it was through gritted teeth that the pair were subsequently 'given some strong advice' about basic seamanship; with that level of incompetence and carelessness out there, it must be only a matter of time before there simply aren't enough lifeboats and helicopters to go round.

Perhaps all this is an inevitable consequence of the ubiquitous health & safety culture pervading our schools and society as a whole. Remove the hazards from day-to-day living and the human race, in Gaia-esque self-regulation, is likely to discover for itself other ways of putting natural selection into practice for the good of the species.

'Warning! Warning!'

As I write this, there are two gas engineers busy digging a hole in the road outside the Tavern. One of them has just lit a cigarette so, if this post is never completed, you will know why...

Remember Sully Island?

The 400m rocky causeway which connects this tiny outcrop to the coast of south Wales is completely covered by fast-flowing water twice a day. Back in 2014, the RNLI installed warning lights in a bid to reduce the number of visitors cut off by the rising tide.

    (BBC news)

At the time, there was a suggestion that additional measures would be needed - audible warnings, perhaps, or text messages; this does not appear to have happened, although a new warning sign was put up earlier this year to supplement the pleasingly dramatic admonition below.

So, three years on, is the system working?

Thirty people have been rescued near Sully Island so far this year.

Well I'd say that's a resounding 'no' - either that or there are even more potential Darwin Award winners out there than I thought. The RNLI and coastguard clearly have their work cut out - and they're not the only ones:

Gordon Hadfield, who owns the beach at Swanbridge and a cafe, said he and his staff had saved six people from the water in the past four years. Three weeks ago he led a family of eight to safety.

So how do people manage to get themselves marooned or washed off the causeway with such depressing regularity? According to the coastguard service

"The sad fact is, a lot of people come down here and do not know the tide is going to come around them. They don't know it's an island, so there's a lot of education around that."

Now, here I have to hold my hands up and say I have never been there but a quick look at Google clearly shows that, at low tide, the island's crown of vegetation is surrounded on all sides by sea-washed sand and rock; you don't have to be a geographical genius to work out the implications - unless, of course, you have no understanding of the concept of tides.

Sadly for humanity (or fortunately for the gene pool, depending on your outlook), such ignorance appears to be far from uncommon, as a trawl through the pages of this blog will show. In addition - and possibly a significant factor at Sully Island - there are the latter-day Cnuts, who somehow believe themselves (and their hapless families) exempt from the laws of nature and regard a tide-lapped causeway as a challenge.

As we have seen on previous excursions to the Somerset coast, the Bristol Channel claims to have the second strongest tides in the world (though some Canadians and Australians might beg to differ). Add in a 40-minute round trip on a slippery rock causeway and a plentiful supply of tourists - either ignorant or foolhardy - and you have a recipe for disaster.

---------------------

Update: from the RNLI website: and still it goes on...

'We were called just after 8:15pm this evening, Sunday 27th August 2017 to attend reports of people in the water off Sully Island. 

When we arrived on scene the people who had been in the water had made it ashore but a further 4 people (3 adults, one child) required lifeboat assistance to return to the mainland.'

They that go down to the sea in blow-up dinghies (Part 2)

A matter of days after the RNLI fished out a couple of lads adrift with their beer cans in the Bristol Channel, another rescue took place off the Kent coast (apparently a favourite spot for maritime Darwin Award hopefuls, as a trawl through the Tavern archives shows).

A dad has told of the terrifying moment he and his family lost control of their dinghy and drifted out to sea.

In this case, the accidental seafarer was accompanied in the 6ft dinghy by his wife, their nine- and seven-year-old children and their seven-month old baby.

The Gillingham resident, who has asked not be named, said his intention was to “go back and forth” in the shallow water near the beach.

“Families all the time take a dinghy out and have a paddle with their children, we were just unfortunate."

Unfortunate, perhaps, in the fact that the engine failed - although they only bought the boat two days before and were unlikely to be familiar with its management - and the subsequent breaking of an oar, but to set out with a full load and (to judge by the photos) only two life jackets between them was surely unwise, to say the least, especially with an outgoing tide (easily checked online) and a steady offshore wind (according to the RNLI).

“The funny thing is that when the oar snapped, I could have jumped out and pulled the dinghy towards shore because we were so close; it’s hard to explain, but the panic just set in."

Instead, they called for help as they drifted a mile out to sea in worsening conditions - the accompanying video shows the craft riding hazardously low in choppy water - using the mobile phone they had with them. This last precaution absolves them, perhaps, of seeking full Darwin Award Hopeful status despite entrusting themselves and their progeny to a fragile and unfamiliar vessel.

Stung by social media criticism, the father contacted the local press to give details of the rescue, including a gratifyingly thorough tribute to the RNLI crew, and a statement that, somehow, has Zeitgeist written all over it:

“In hindsight, we definitely shouldn’t have done it, trust me the lesson has been learnt. But it was never our intention to go anymore than a matter of feet from the beach, events just took over."

They that go down to the sea in blow-up dinghies

As the coastal Darwin Award Hopeful season continues, we have the slightly baffling story of two would-be mariners picked up by the RNLI off the Somerset coast.

The lifeboat crew, scrambled from work when the Coastguard spotted the child-sized boat drifting a mile out to sea, arrived to find the leaking 5ft dinghy occupied by two full-grown men 'oblivious that they were out of control and at the mercy of the very strong tides'.

The intrepid amateur seafarers had been at sea for three hours already, having drastically underestimated the distance to their intended destination of Steep Holm, a rocky island five miles offshore in the Bristol Channel.

What they expected to do there is, it has to be said, something of a mystery:

It is a nature reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest famed for its beautiful May-flowering wild peony. It is home to the remains of a 12th century Augustinian priory.

While it also boasts the remnants of wartime military installations and a Victorian barracks (now a 'Visitor and Education/Exhibition Centre'), it is hard to see this plethora of aesthetic and intellectual stimulation appealing to the bare-chested duo - one sporting abundant tattoos and a back-to-front baseball cap - pictured in the RNLI report.

Even if I am wrong and their motives were of the loftiest, they chose an odd way to go about it. Regular day trips are on offer and, given that Steep Holm is 'in the middle of a busy shipping channel, isolated by brisk tidal currents and a difficult landing place', it takes a special sort of mindset to purchase a toy boat from a beach shop and set off merrily into the blue.

Sadly for the men and women of the RNLI, there's a lot of it about.



Update: The Mail has since got hold of the story - claiming in its inimitable style, that they were 'five miles out' and 'without a paddle', despite the oars clearly visible in the accompanying video and the article stating 'a mile'- and identified the pair:

Mr Hole - a tattoo artist - said: 'It was going well until we got a small puncture and the boat started slowly going flat. We were miles from where we set off. I'm not sure how we got the puncture, but I think it might have been off one of the beer cans cutting the inside.

Cnuttery? There's an app for that...

With the onset of warmer weather around these shores, we are girding our metaphorical loins to document the usual quota of beach rescues.

Along with the foolhardy who either fail to appreciate the lunar influence on our seas or believe that the laws of physics apply only to other people, those calling upon the skills of the maritime rescue services can often include the hubristic unwary who think they can walk on water - or rather, water-saturated mud.

Those members of my family who grew up within spitting distance of the Sands of Dee were, to a man (and woman) reared on the poetic fate of Mary, who chose the wrong time to fetch the cattle home across the estuary and thereby met an untimely and soggy end; 'And never home came she...' Such cautionary tales have, for countless generations, been used to teach impressionable youngsters the dangers of coastal mud and a rising tide.

Now, however, with schools more likely to teach the exploits of Anansi the Spider (spelling amended - see below) or Rama and Sita than the sad story of Mary and her cows and with easy travel bringing droves of unwary landlubbers to the seaside, the rescue services have their work cut out.

This weekend brought a particularly up-to-date version of the problem, thanks to a mobile-phone based craze doubtless conceived by urban technophiles who don't see much of Mother Nature in the raw, so to speak:

The coastguard had to be called out after 15 people got stuck in mud while taking part in a hi-tech seaside treasure hunt.

Someone appears to have had the bright idea of hiding the 'treasure' near the low water mark during a spring tide on a stretch of coastline notorious for quicksand. According to the coastguard Operations Officer:

"We have since discovered that they were undertaking the hobby of geocaching. This was in an extremely dangerous place and we would not encourage others to search in these areas because there are complex tidal patterns and deep mud."

Geocaching is, as I understand it, running around with a GPS-enabled smartphone looking for clues; self-preservation, it seems, is optional. The impressive supporting cast called out out by concerned passers-by (and credited in full in the Telegraph) consisted of:

Clevedon Lifeboat, the coastguard helicopter from Portland, a search and rescue helicopter from RAF Chivenor, the Portishead RNLI inshore lifeboat, teams from the Weston-super-Mare and Portishead Coastguard Rescue and the Somerset Fire and Rescue Firefly Hovercraft.

Along with one for the ultimate selfie fail, it's probably about time they set up a special Darwin Award category for those who, abandoning all common sense, may blithely follow their own pocket-sized Pied Piper into oblivion.

Messing About In Boats

This year's coastal inadequacy season appears to have got off to a flying start with a 25-ft yacht crashing into rocks just off the Isle of Wight en route to Plymouth.

The boat had no safety equipment, Mr Trejbal was navigating with one page from an atlas and when he was rescued he thought he was 30 miles away - in Southampton.

Ah yes, the old page-torn-from-an-atlas navigation technique so beloved of Darwin Award hopefuls - though a little outdated now, perhaps, given the availability of car sat-nav systems.

It is not known where Mr Trejbal, who is a Czech national, set off from but it is thought he eventually wanted to travel to Turkey.

Such is the wonder of modern technology that it took me only a few seconds to establish that this would entail a journey of around 3,200 nautical miles - taking well over a month in a boat of that size - including a cut across the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay; a tall order indeed for such an ill-equipped expedition.

It's not the first incident of its kind and certainly won't be the last. What always puzzles me is that the possession of a road atlas or vehicle sat-nav suggests that, while on land, at least, these people fully appreciate the importance of having some tangible aid to navigation.

Truly the incompetence of mankind knows no bounds - especially at sea!

Of mud and stars

Oh dear; decisions, decisions!

Returning from a few days of bracing (if somewhat muddy) walks in one of the more picturesque parts of the country, I am faced with not one but two irresistible topics.

Firstly there is 2014 UF56, a bus-sized asteroid passing by a mere 158,000 km above our heads just after 9pm tonight - have your glasses filled and ready!

And secondly, to brighten up a dark October evening, there is the boy racer who spent yesterday watching his pride and joy sink slowly into the mud near Burnham on Sea.

We have, of course, reported from the area before;  despite warning signs and publicity, a combination of Britain's biggest tidal range and vehicle access to the beach is clearly too much temptation for some.

Just a few months after a father-and-daughter team discovered the hard way that coastal mud makes a less than ideal driving surface, a 22-year-old from Bristol decided that his Saturday night would not be complete until he had taken his souped-up Celica for a spin on the beach.

Finding himself inextricably embedded in mud over the axles with an incoming tide, he abandoned the vehicle (and his chances of a Darwin Award - this time, at least) and escaped to shore. Recovering the car, however, has proved considerably more problematical, as the pictures show.

And there's more to enjoy in the comments:

It's got a GT-Four boot spoiler on it but DVLA states that it's a 1762cc car, which means it's not actually a GT-Four (they were 2 litre).

So, a Saturday night boy racer and a poser; our cup of Schadenfreude runneth over!

Speaking of which, it's about time for our annual musical comment on Sober October; after a sparse few months, we are entering a reasonable crowded part of the orbit - last Friday produced the undeniable convenient 2014 SC324 - and can look forward to plenty more close approaches in the near future.

The man who drinks cold water pure
And goes to bed quite sober
Falls as the early leaves do fall
So early in October,
But he who drinks just what he likes
Until he's half seas over
Shall live until, until he dies
And then lie down in clover.

Bells and Whistles

I think it is fair to say that Sully Island, off the south coast of Wales, is never going to be a hot tourist destination for the masses.

For those who like their landscapes unspoiled, however, this former smugglers' refuge boasts an Iron Age fort and a Victorian shipwreck as well as panoramic views out over the Bristol Channel.

There is, however, one small problem: the island stands at the end of a 400m rocky causeway, cut off by the tide for all but a few hours a day, a situation which, regular readers will not be surprised to learn, appears to be beyond the comprehension of some visitors.

Over Bank Holiday weekends in particular, the local Penarth lifeboat crew must barely get a chance to sit down to a nice cup of tea and a slice of bara brith.

“We are repeatedly called out to rescue people cut off on Sully Island, despite constant warnings about the dangers of the incoming tide"

In  bid to cut down the number of incidents - and enable the crews to get on with the rest of their lives - the RNLI installed a pilot scheme in mid-June using tide powered traffic lights:

The traffic lights will use a tide gauge and indicate when it is safe for people to cross, when time is running out and when it is unsafe to walk along the causeway.

The yellow phase provides a countdown on how much time is left on the causeway as a return trip takes about 40 minutes on foot.

So, over two months on, was the scheme a success?

AN RNLI text service warning visitors about safe crossing times could be introduced to the Sully Island causeway in a bid to stop visitors getting stranded on the island.

Er... that'd be a 'no', then.

A sound warning system, and another traffic lights warning system based on the island, are also being considered by the RNLI in an effort to cut the number of call-outs to the volunteer lifeboat crew.

In fact, the number of call-outs this summer appears to have been basically unchanged, with stranded walkers claiming not to have seen the lights - the suggestion that they might, of their own initiative, have ascertained the tide times beforehand doesn't appear to enter into it - although evidence elsewhere points to a minority who feel such warnings somehow do not apply to them.

So the RNLI are planning another set of lights on the island - somewhat to the detriment, one feels, of this scenic Site of Special Scientific Interest - and a sound warning, as well as sending tide times to anyone who texts them to ask.

And when that doesn't work, and Mr and Mrs Cnut and their little dog still end up marooned, what then?

One reassuringly certain thing about the tide is that it goes down again. By my calculations, it's never going to be more than about seven or eight hours until the causeway is passable again, and, if they were fit enough to undertake the 20-minute walk across the rocks, a night in the open isn't going to kill them.

The problem is that their stupidity just might:

“People are unaware off just how quickly the tide comes in and when they realise they are being cut off, they tend to panic and try to make it over the causeway to the mainland."

Which, given the depth of the channel and the fierce local currents, is a seriously bad idea. It's the perpetual problem faced by the RNLI; manpower and resources diverted from real emergencies into rescuing people from the consequences of their own foolhardiness or ignorance.

And it's horribly symptomatic of a society in which we are all subjected to ever more interference because some people cannot or will not accept responsibility for themselves.

'I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide..

...is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.'

Well, we expected this week's unusually high tides to bring some interesting examples of Man (and Woman) failing to grasp the fact that the sea goes up and down and we certainly weren't disappointed.

Coastguard and RNLI reports show a predictable host of unwary day-trippers managing to get cut off in a variety of scenic shoreline locations but special mention must go to the woman stranded at the old breakwater in Lyme Regis with her six children, potentially making somewhat belated amends for having contributed so generously to the gene pool.

Also worth noting are the two cars which had to be extracted from the sea at Redcar yesterday. In one case, rather than wading to shore through a few inches of water, the occupants scrambled up to the roof of the vehicle and sat there in state like two latter-day King Cnuts.

Similar automotive woes awaited an unfortunate fisherman whose boat broke down off Dunbar. Finally rescued by the RNLI, he returned to the harbour to find his car under five feet of water (in the great tradition of local headlines, The East Lothian News gives us 'It's park and tide').

Forget the dour east-coast stereotypes, Dunbar's finest are clearly compassionate souls...

Gary Fairbairn, coxswain of Dunbar RNLI, said: “We didn’t have the heart to tell him about his car until we got back to land." 

...well, either that or they are veritable connoisseurs of Schadenfreude and wanted to savour the look on his face when he saw his submerged vehicle:

"To say he wasn’t happy is an understatement.”

 There was less sympathy, however, in the comments:

'A full moon, highest tides, and he leaves it on the slipway to get in the way of other users? Sell yer boat son and stick to dry land.'

Meanwhile, we've become familiar with youngsters outsourcing their thinking to phones which, in some cases, appear to be smarter than their owners. There is certainly a growing tendency to rely on the things at the expense of common sense, as three holidaymakers from Essex found out when they set up a barbecue on a remote part of a Devon beach.

They had no idea of tide times, so it must have come as something of a shock to find themselves marooned on a fast-diminishing patch of sand at the foot of a sheer cliff. It was at that point that they realized - oh, the horror! - that they had no mobile signal to call for help.

Natural selection was thwarted by some distant observers calling out the rescue teams who airlifted them to safety, but even these Darwin Award hopefuls are presumably more of an asset to the gene pool than a group of teenagers from Norfolk.

With a high spring tide and a surge predicted, Hunstanton's Environment agency teams spent Tuesday night checking their flood defences. Patrolling the beach in the early hours of the morning, they found a cheerfully coloured tent pitched well below the expected high-water mark and containing five happily snoring teenage boys.

As anyone who has ever given houseroom to the species will know, teenage boys can sleep through alarm clocks, ringing phones or determined hoovering - almost anything, in fact, except the smell of frying bacon - so it's highly likely that without intervention, the youngsters would have been swamped inside their sleeping bags.

I hope their parents - and future progeny - are duly grateful.

Risking life and limb

'Against stupidity', says a character in a Schiller play, 'the gods themselves contend in vain.'

What hope is there, then, for the men and women of the RNLI and coastguard service, faced with this sort of thing?

Warnings about the dangers of boozing and swimming have been issued after a man was found clinging to a post in Swansea Bay as darkness fell.

The 24-year-old was eventually found holding onto an outfall post, which at high tide is around half a mile out to sea.

One hopes he has learnt a valuable lesson; in any case, given where he was picked up, I doubt he'll be socialising at close quarters with anyone for a while.

More recently, the much-publicised tail-end of a hurricane last weekend caused organisers in Cowes to postpone the start of a round Britain sailing race because of the poor weather conditions in the Channel and led to 41 cars being damaged on a ferry to Guernsey.

Such dramatic weather conditions, naturally, sent Darwin Award hopefuls scurrying in search of their surfboards and inflatables:

Coastguards rescued dinghies, kitesurfers and windsurfers as strong winds blew along the Jurassic Coast.

Sunday turned out to be quite a busy day there; in between fishing out several wind- and kite-surfers who had lost control of their contraptions, the coastguard, RNLI and ambulance were all needed to help an adult and child who had been blown out to sea in a small inflatable boat. Two more people in a second inflatable boat had to be rescued soon afterwards when it started shipping water.

Even on land, the stupidity continues unabated:

Safety warnings have been issued after a weekend of risk-taking on Dorset’s beaches. Beachgoers still continue to risk their lives near unstable cliffs – sunbathing just metres away from a warning sign.

While we are all familiar with the many unnecessary warning signs that clutter up our green and pleasant land, cliff collapses are surely sufficiently frequent and serious to give any rational beachgoer pause for thought, especially after a spell of wet weather. The Darwin Award contender, however, clearly feels the laws of nature should not apply to him (or her).

The same mentality is doubtless responsible for the situation reported by an exasperated Brixham coastguard last month, after a woman with a broken ankle had to be rescued from a closed-off section of coastal path:

“It was noted during the course of this rescue that more than a dozen people ignored signs and climbed over barriers to use this section of the coast path which is closed due to safety reasons.”

While once could argue that these people should be free to endanger themselves in any manner they think fit, it would be a very good thing if they could be brought to realize that the rescue services do not have the choice.

Talking Torquay

With this weekend's 'supermoon' expected to bring higher than normal spring tides, we will doubtless be spoilt for choice by next week's haul of rescue-related news stories.

In Devon, however, they are planning to put the rising waters to excellent use. According to the grandly-named Torquay Herald Express (which is clearly no stranger to the obligatory headline pun),

Entries are flooding in for a new competition to Beat the Tide in Paignton.

Today's contest, in aid of muscular dystrophy charity Action Duchenne, is the first of what organisers hope will become an annual event in which teams of six to eight people are given an hour to build a mound of sand on the beach.

When the tide comes in, all the team members must climb onto their giant sandcastle and stay there as the water rises around them.

The winners will be the last team left standing; all the fun of being cut off by the tide without having to bother the emergency services and a valuable lesson on fluid dynamics into the bargain, all while helping a worthwhile cause.

Forget 'Strictly X-factor Find Me a Talented Nancy Boy on Ice'; this is the competition that should be broadcast to the nation tonight - and every subsequent year until the RNLI stop having to fish out would-be Cnuts at every spring tide.

...........................

As a bonus, the same edition of the local newspaper provides the delightfully paradoxical headline:

Is the 89p pound shop in Torquay the cheapest in the country?

It appears that two rival discount outlets have been systematically undercutting each other over the past few weeks in a sort of economic limbo dance of 'tactical marketing'. Last week, 'The 99p Store' in Torquay was selling everything for 92p, while 'Poundland' was pricing its merchandise at a mere 90p.

'The 99p Store' has now retaliated by dropping its prices to 89p. This price-cutting is, presumably, subsidised by some kind of central fighting fund designed to put rivals out of business. If it carries on until one of them blinks, it will become a test of which business can afford to sell below cost for longest.

The same thing has happened in other towns, albeit with less media attention - the Daily Mail picked this up while I had a post in draft (which is always annoying!) - but this seems to be the longest and toughest price battle so far and must be putting other retailers under strain.

If this is the future, we can surely look forward to high streets filled with the ubiquitous phone shops and nail bars and a multiplicity of discount outlets selling whatever they have managed to acquire on the grey market that week.

Oh brave new world, that has such retail in it!


(There is, of course, only one soundtrack for a story like the latter one; happy earworm, everybody!)

That sinking feeling (again)

Another day, another car. The search and rescue team at Brean Beach must be getting sick of having to dig out the stranded motors of people who think the laws of physics don't apply to them.

The driver of the latest unintentionally amphibious vehicle had taken it half a mile down the beach heedless of warnings to the public not to approach the water's edge at low tide because of soft sand and mud.

"I'd just been driving along the beach with my daughter enjoying the sunshine and didn't think I could get stuck."

This is, presumably, the same mindset that causes school run parents in 4x4s to pull out across two lanes of traffic without looking; the hubristic sense that your vehicle makes you somehow indestructible.

Fortunately for the driver and his daughter, they didn't get the opportunity to qualify for a multiple Darwin Award by discovering that quicksand is more than just a handy plot device in adventure films.

Connoisseurs of Schadenfreude can find photos and some highly satisfying video footage at the Burnham news site.

All at sea

It is, alas, no surprise that the warm weather has, once more, brought the nautical Darwin Award hopefuls out in force . Exmouth RNLI, for example, were roused from their beauty sleep at 5am on Sunday when shouts for help were heard from the river:

A coastguard spokesman said: “The guy had been to the pub in the evening and decided to go kayaking in the middle of the night. 

“The tide was coming in and he was taken up the river which wasn't the direction he wanted to go. He capsized and the inshore lifeboat found him holding onto a moored boat at Pole Sands.”

A few hours later, the Exmouth crews were out again, this time delivering a stern lecture to one of those parents who, having already contributed to the gene pool, appear to be attempting to remedy the fact with the help of an inflatable toy,  an outgoing tide and an offshore wind.

And RNLI crews on the Tamar have quite enough on their hands without having to deal with the likes of the Plymouth man reported missing by his wife when he failed to return from a fishing trip by 10.30pm on Saturday night; emergency services finally traced his mobile phone to the restaurant where he was having dinner, though the news story sadly fails to say with whom.

Elsewhere, Man's (or, in this case, Woman's) battle against the tide has claimed yet another automotive victim; since it's clear that individual responsibility is never going to be enough, perhaps the authorities at Brean Beach car park should look into some way to alert motorists to the rising waters.

A few pence on the cost of parking could, with a bit of imagination, furnish a brightly-coloured paper wristband stamped with that day's 'leave-by' time, though personally I rather like the idea of firing a cannon from the nearby fort as the water approaches.

After all, if people need to be protected from the consequences of their own lack of forethought, the rest of us ought to be able to get some fun out of it where we can.

"The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls..."

I know, I know.... it's been a bit quiet around here recently. Still, however severe the demands of real life and the blogging fatigue, sometimes a news story comes along that is simply too good to let go.

Here at the Tavern, we try to do our bit in chronicling Man's battle against the elements and, in particular, his lack of even the most basic grasp of tidal dynamics so we were naturally most diverted to learn that:

Jedward, the Irish pop group, has been rescued by the Irish Coast Guard after they became trapped by the incoming tide in north Dublin.

For those who managed to escape it thus far, Jedward is a pair of twins - John and Edward (are your toes curling yet?) - gifted with truly astonishing hair and dress sense. It plays the guitar and, arguably, sings and burst onto the music scene some years ago in series 157 of 'Britain's got X-rated Opportunity Knockers' before becoming Ireland's secret weapon to avoid having to host the Eurovision Song Contest again.

A quick trip to Youtube may help to account for the delicious sense of Schadenfreude elicited by this tale of Jedward and its cousin stranded amid the rising waves:

"The boys were getting more and more desperate as the water was coming in. Thank God the Coast Guard sent the helicopter up and it found them trapped on sands near Malahide."

So was Jedward airlifted to safety, plucked from the rising waters in the nick of time? Reader, it was not:

The helicopter crew spotted the stranded Grimes family members and used a floodlight to point out their location to rescuers on the ground.

Skerries coast guard members reached the group on foot shortly after midnight and reunited all three with the rest of their family.

This escapade was, it appears, the result of a late evening stroll along the beach in blissful ignorance not only of the incoming tide but also of the fact that night follows day.

The Irish Coast Guard received a report that the three had become "disoriented in the area due to the falling darkness and unusually fast incoming tide".

Such a startling lack of self-preservation instinct should surely qualify for some kind of award. Still, it all ended happily and, being well-brought up, Jedward had the good grace to thank its rescuers publicly and exhort other Darwin Award hopefuls not to follow in its soggy footsteps.

Sadly for the rescue services, past experience suggests that the appeal is likely to be in vain.


My thanks to those of you who have turned up and rattled the Tavern door during my absence - the bar should be opening for business on a more regular basis for a while so please drop in and join me for a virtual pint.

It's happy hour again!

You can blame a combination of holidays and blogging fatigue for the recent hiatus at the Tavern; a glance at the newspapers on returning from foreign climes has left me wondering whether, in my absence, the entire nation has collectively jumped the shark and British life is now utterly beyond satire.

Two things, however, have inspired me to polish the tankards and set out the bar-stools again; one is the eagerly-awaited announcement that fellow hostelry The Raccoon Arms is once more open for business and the other is news that the King Cnut season has started particularly early this year.

A Swindon family were left stranded when their car was caught up in the high tide after parking on a beach in Somerset.

Once again, residents of our once-proud seafaring nation have been caught out by the fact that the sea goes up and down. Fortunately the car wasn't badly damaged, though it would be hard to argue with the local website's assertion that

They were visiting Brean on a trip to celebrate a memorable 30th birthday for Iain's wife.

They weren't the first of the year, though: a week before, a red Vauxhall Tigra convertible parked in the same place had to be rescued by the local beach warden, to the accompaniment, one suspects, of a certain amount of Schadenfreude among the watching crowds.

If all this sounds familiar, it's because we've been here before. Last year:

Teenager Andy Laird returned from lunch to find his car had been submerged in the sea. The 19-year-old parked his Vauxhall Corsa on the beach in the popular coastal town of Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, on Saturday afternoon.

Three other motorists had to be rescued from beaches in the Burnham-On-Sea area of Somerset on Sunday evening as high tides caught them out.

And before that in 2009:

Holidaymakers at a seaside resort could not believe their eyes when they saw no less than FIVE cars parked on two beaches swamped by the sea.

(Fewer, DM, fewer!)

Either Burnham's beach exerts a particular fascination for ignorant landlubbers or the council's policy of operating a pay-and-display car park on a beach with the second largest tidal range in the world demonstrates a touching but unfounded faith in the public's capacity for individual responsibility (though their website does helpfully advise motorists to avoid areas of wet sand and mud).

With such an early start, this promises to be a vintage year for coastal idiocy, giving the Tavern gossips plenty of opportunity to discuss the failings of their fellow-man over a brimming tankard or two.

Cheers, one and all!

A fatal attraction

'...behind all, is spread as a curtain the eternal sea, ever the same and ever changing. Yet I love to see it best when it is lashed to madness in the autumn gale, and to hear the grinding roar and churn of the pebbles like a great organ playing all the night. 

'Tis then I turn in bed and thank God, more from the heart, perhaps, than, any other living man, that I am not fighting for my life on Moonfleet Beach.'

No-one reading John Meade Falkner's classic novel could have any doubt that the sea can be lethal not just to mariners but to those struggling with storm waves onshore.

The media coverage and Christmas break have conspired to send an unprecedented number of storm-watchers and thrill-seekers out to cause anxiety - and extra work - to those responsible for public safety around Britain's coast and, for some, the results have been fatal.

Some years ago, I attended the funeral of an ex-sailor with decades of experience of the sea. He was swept off rocks by a freak wave only a few miles from where the now-notorious parents took their small children onto the harbour wall; even those familiar with the risks can be caught out.

When the hymn 'Eternal Father, strong to save' began, the congregation stood but the hymn-books remained closed. Everyone there knew by heart the words of that heartfelt plea on behalf of 'those in peril on the sea' - a telling indication of how coastal communities view the risk with which they live and, sadly, of the number of sea-related memorial services the church has seen.

These same communities provide the volunteers who crew the lifeboats; they know better than anyone the potential danger of rough seas along the coastline and yet are prepared to go out in appalling conditions to save lives.

By contrast, even allowing for over-dramatic journalistic commentary, it appears that those putting themselves in harm's way for the thrill of a soaking or a memorable photograph must have little idea of the destructive power of waves or water-borne debris.

I've written elsewhere in a more light-hearted vein on popular ignorance of the sea, but, this week at least, it's no joking matter. There is a natural attraction in the spectacle of in waves 'lashed to madness' but, unless appreciation is tempered with respect and common sense, it is likely to go on luring the unwary to their deaths.

Toast of the week - a Herculean task

In the previous post, I mentioned a man dressed as Santa Claus on behalf of a Canvey Island charity, whose sleigh was undeservedly run out of town at the behest of some over-zealous citizens (JuliaM has the story too).

He is, in fact, the chairman and founder of the charity 'The Friends of Concord Beach', an organisation formed with the laudable aims of maintaining the salt-water pool there and promoting 'good citizenship, civic responsibility and good habits' in those visiting the area and using the facilities.

The group are also busy arranging for sponsored benches along the front and a pool-side shower, together with murals to cover unsightly graffiti and some very polite notices:

But it doesn't stop there; these valiant souls have a far more challenging objective in their sights:

To promote the education of those who visit the beach in sea water and beach safety as it applies to the tidal estuary of the River Thames.

One has to admire their ambition; as a trawl through the Tavern archives makes abundantly clear, Britain's coastline is the destination of choice for an alarming number of Darwin Award hopefuls every year. In fact, an appropriately seasonal example was reported this week:

Two men who were in a toy inflatable boat and wearing penguin and Santa costumes have been taken to a Cornish harbour by the RNLI after they were seen drifting out to sea.

These intrepid mariners set out to paddle across Mount's Bay from Marazion to Penzance, a distance of about 4km, in voluminous fancy dress and without the benefit of life-jackets or a seaworthy craft; what a good thing we've been having such calm weather recently!

If the Friends of Concord Beach seriously intend to tackle the Augean stables of public ignorance of even the basics of beach safety, they certainly have their work cut out, which is why we are raising a glass to them and their endeavours.

Friends of Concord Beach, your very good health!

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

For a supposedly seafaring nation with a strong maritime tradition, it's odd how many people each year get into trouble because they have failed to grasp the idea that the sea goes up and down twice a day and that waves generate considerable force.

And that is without the extra hazards of water-borne stones and debris caught up in rough seas and propelled with enough force to cause serious injury or kill.

This week's tidal surge, unsurprisingly, brought out the Darwin Award contenders in droves. One particular example sticks in the mind; according to a policeman in Southwold (quoted in the BBC live coverage):

"We had to drag a photographer off the prom that was laying there with his legs wrapped around a metal railing, photographing the waves going over the top of him."

And amid the myriad examples, as I've said before, there really ought to be a special category for those who, having reproduced, appear to be doing their best to rectify the situation by disposing of themselves and their progeny in one fell swoop:

Police in Yarmouth urged 'sightseers' to stay away, saying they were placing themselves at 'significant risk'. 

They said crowds, including people with small children on their shoulders, had been seen gathering close to the seafront.

Meanwhile, in Scarborough, a photographer recording the predictable foolhardiness of White Van Man scooped an unexpected bonus; yes, that really is someone pushing a pram along the notoriously dangerous seafront in a storm.

(photo: Reuters via Daily Mail)

And finally, if you will forgive a bit of uncharacteristic whimsy, amidst the formulaic coverage by tired reporters who already knew that, even if they gave their all, the results would be eclipsed by the media Mandelafest and relegated to an edited slot on the local news, this was a welcome breath of fresh air.

Be patient - the presenter doesn't appear until 30 seconds in - and do watch to the end for a charming display of incipient apocaholism.

(credit to Sky News for the discovery)

Beautiful Eurydice shows how it's done

With the Tavern's interest in matters maritime, it may not surprise you to know that we once owned a tide clock.

Things have come a long way since the intricate machines constructed for the purpose in the 19th century, which represent an impressive degree of initiative and ingenuity as well as having a certain steampunk charm.

Ours resembled a normal clock, except that the numbers had been replaced by a jaunty selection of flags (which may, for all I know, may spell out an exceedingly rude message in naval code; I never checked) marking off the tide levels in its 12.4 hour circuit.

Setting this useful gadget turned out to be a complicated and arcane ritual which had to be performed at high tide when the moon was full, as close to midnight as possible. Even then the clock lost 15 minutes a month and had to be reset at regular intervals, necessitating much checking of tide tables to find a suitable opportunity.

The speckled sea-louse, however, is spared all this fuss, since it has its own internal tide clock. According to recent research, Eurydice pulchra, even when removed from tidal waters and deprived of the circadian mechanism that reacts to light, continues to swim in time to anticipated tide changes.

The creature's name presumably derives from the way it burrows deep into the sand at low tide and emerges when the tide comes in, all, it appears, guided by a built-in ability to predict the ebb and flow.

I can't help feeling that, given the vast number of tide-related call-outs the RNLI have reported this summer, it would be a very good thing if scientists found some way of implanting this awareness in human beings.

Meanwhile, you can never have enough Gluck.

Toast of the week - animal rescue edition

It's not just humans who get cut off by the tide, you know...

Two young ferrets who were at risk of drowning were rescued by lifeboat volunteers at Newbiggin RNLI lifeboat station.

What makes this story particularly appealing - apart from its furry protagonists - is the tone of the RNLI account of the incident, written by the local volunteer Press Officer, who has eschewed the usual utilitarian style of reporting in favour of a more literary approach:

The ferrets' anxious owners had made desperate attempts to save their animals by wading into the sea on the Cambois Bay rocks but their best endeavours looked likely to be scuppered when neither Tootsie or Lucky responded.

The crew found Tootsie and Lucky minutes away from drowning by the rapidly rising tide.

Fortunately the intrepid rescuers were able to calm the animals (and, by the sound of it, their distraught owners) and lift them to safety from the rocks.

The icing on the cake is the accompanying photograph, taken by the author; showing two seemingly identical ferrets, it is carefully labelled 'Tootsie (left) and Lucky' - a level of attention to detail that some of our national newspapers would do well to emulate.

It may come as no surprise that the Press Officer, who has written a book about the lifeboat station, is also listed as their mechanic; it's surely good news for the crews and those who may need rescuing that the lifeboats are in such meticulous hands.

When every day seems to bring us another news report of man's inhumanity (or indifference) to man, it is reassuring to think there are still volunteers out there prepared to risk life and limb if necessary to save lives - and to rescue the occasional pet.

It's a while since we had a toast in the Tavern, so I invite you to raise a glass tonight to the men and women of the RNLI and to their Press Officer in Newbiggin by the sea.