Broken Groynes Mean Poor Beach At Holland-on-Sea Even At Low Tide

There was a particularly low tide on 9 May 2012.  Here is how the beach looked at 8:30am at Walton-on-the-Naze.

The sea is a long way from the Albion groyne, probably about 30 yards.

At Holland Haven around 9am the sea is almost below the end of the  groyne at the ramp by the sailing club.  But this groyne is less than half the length of the Albion groyne so there is much less beach here compared to Walton, only about 40%.

A few minutes later by Flags Cafe the situation is even worse

Looking south

Looking north

Closer to the pier, near groyne 35 there seems to be a bit more beach. The groyne numbers are written on the sea wall in yellow, usually where you can read them as you walk along the promenade.

It’s a long way down to the beach.  5 steps up from the promenade and 25 down to the beach.

Where there are effective groynes the sand and shingle comes to the top of the groyne.

But here the top of the groynes are a long way below the promenade.

The low beach allows the sea to come in much further which is why there is nearly no beach even on a spring low tide.

In these pictures, taken south of Clacton Pier around 9:30, you can clearly see the groynes are nearly as high as the promenade.  Surprise surprise there is plenty of beach, about 5 times as much as north of the pier.

Looking north

Looking south it is again clear the groynes and sand come  nearly to the level of the promenade.

The key difference between here and  Holland Haven or Flags Cafe is south of the pier there are no holes in groynes.  At Holland there are large sections of the groynes missing, usually in the part closest to the sea wall. This makes the groyne useless.

So the message is where there are  groynes without holes in, the sea will fill the space between groynes with sand or shingle.  The height of the beach is determined by the height of the groynes.  An earlier post showed groynes at Frinton and Walton are about twice as long and closer together than those at Holland and Clacton.