Kilve to Steart – 12th March 2023
“Stepping-out towards Kilve and the start of today’s coastal leg.”
Our final day of exploring the West Somerset coast will join together the previous two stretches of coastline. We had intended doing the Burnham to Brean leg today, but the weather forecast suggested that it was going to chuck it down. We don’t mind walking in the rain, but cycling in it can be pretty miserable, with any traffic offering a significant risk in wet conditions. Typically with the British weather, the forecast has since changed and we are set fair for today. No complaints here though Messers Fish, Kettley, McCaskill and Giles.
The logistics of today’s movements have taxed my grey cells considerably, but I have come up with an excellent solution to the vexed issue of non-existent public transport between Kilve and the mouth of the River Parrett at Steart. So we will drive to Steart with the bikes on the back. The car is then left at Steart whilst we cycle the 12 miles back to Holford where our AirBnB is located. Here we can safely leave the bikes and walk the 2 miles to Kilve, before walking the coast back to the car at Steart. Sorted then!
We are once again at Kilve Beach, but this time we head eastwards past Lilstock and Hinkley Point. The Liassic rocks (part of the Jurassic period) still form the cliffs, but these are significantly lower and pretty well disappear East of Hinkley Point. Beyond is salt marsh and the Parrett Estuary. The driving, cycling and walking required to get our car to Steart and us to here have gone well. All we need do now is complete the circuit, by walking along the cliff top to Steart.
Kilve has an ancient chantry which once housed 5 monks engaged to say prayers for the soul of its founder Sir Simon de Furneaux in the 14th Century. I suspect his soul had a setback come the end of this century, since when the chantry appears to have fallen into disuse, other than as a barn and a smugglers store (neither use likely to open many doors to heaven – but perhaps he had passed through by then?). Today it is in a poor state of repair and is listed as ‘very bad’ on English Heritage’s ‘Heritage at Risk Register’ and has been placed at the highest risk category (A).
Yesterday Betty was not the least bit interested in looking around Kilve Beach, because she was freezing cold and wanted to get warm. Today it is much pleasanter weather and we dwell briefly to take in what remains of industrial activity which took place here in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. A lime kiln was built here at what is known as Kilve Pill – a small quay for bringing in fuel for the kiln (and I assume taking out some of the manufactured quick lime used for lime cement). More striking than the remains of the lime kiln are what’s left of an iron retort encased in brick, which was supposed to extract oil from local oil shales. It seems however that it was all part of a 1924 Ponzi scheme to get people to invest in a venture that had no legs. The fraudster was William Forbes Leslie. https://www.bridgwatermercury.co.uk/news/16295526.bizarre-story-west-somerset-oil-boom-never-happened/ We all like a good story, but you’ll have to read this one for yourself. The retort however is fascinating, the more-so because a tree has started growing out of the chimney (possibly ivy).
Soon we are standing looking down from the top of low cliffs, where we can see a number of hard-hatted individuals in the process of being instructed about their geology. They are evidently university geology students, here to study the stratigraphy (the strata, or beds of rocks exposed in the cliffs) or the fossils buried within. They will not be hammering at the cliff itself as these days this is a definite no-no.
Glad that we are not alone enjoying the coastal environment, we waste no time marching eastward along the cliff top. Cliff top walking gives us extensive views across the Bristol Channel, but not the up-close-and-personal experience we crave. We will need to descend to the beach and the base of the cliffs at some stage to satisfy this particular desire. The cliff path here is popular with dog walkers, many of whom perhaps do the 2 mile walk between Kilve and Lilstock. After a couple of miles of walking we come across the Royal Navy Gunnery Range observation tower. Beyond this the cliffs diminish in height, as we approach Lilstock, offering us the chance to descend to beach level for lunch.
“The ruins of Kilve Chantry.”
“A retort built in 1924 to extract oil from shales at Kilve.”
“Several geology students gather to examine the Kilve geology.”
“Jurassic coast forms modest cliffs which are subject to rapid erosion by the sea”
Sitting on a couple of large boulders, made of limestone laid down some 200 million years ago certainly gives a sense of place to a luncheon engagement. We are not alone though. Along the beach a couple of chaps and a dog can be seen picking through the rocks evidently in search of something. They have a slightly shifty look to them and I quickly finish my sandwich just in case like Herring Gulls, they come a-begging. A quick exchange of “good morning” with the elder of the two is benign enough and they continue on their quest.
It is time for us to recommence ours, so we pack our bags and carefully pick our way over the beach boulders back to the easier walking provided by the coast path. The beachcombers have decide to turn back, pausing to pick up a large log washed up on the last tide. I get into conversation with the elder of them, whilst his younger, beefier mate carries the log on his shoulders.
“I see you’re collecting drift wood. Is it for art purposes? Are you by any chance a sculptor?”
“No we just visit here and other locations with our van every day. There’s a lot of wood comes up each tide, so we collect it and we mostly cut it up for firewood.”
Here’s a sustainable industry few people would be aware of. How much wood falls overboard from ships, or for that matter trees floating down rivers during flooding, end up in the sea? It’s a relatively small amount I suspect, but it provides a supply of free foraged wood for these two guys. Betty and I once collected bits of driftwood on the coast of Arran in Scotland. It has a lovely wave worn smoothness to it and weathers to a pale sun-bleached patina – ideal for making sculptures and garden ornaments.
“We were thinking of walking along the beach, rather than having to go all the way round Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station. Do you know if it is permitted?” I ask, pointing at the looming mass of concrete a couple of miles away.
“No problem,” he says, “I often walk along there – you just pass under the pier and come out at Steart on the far side. Tide’s on its way out so you’ll be fine.”
I am effusive in my thanks for this nugget of local knowledge. It is as if I have opened a door for him to pour out all sorts of other bit of local history to me as he proceeds to explain about Lilstock being an important little local port at one time. I recall seeing an episode of “Coast” where they covered Lilstock, but having a local guide is even better. He points out the former harbour wall and the remains of a slipway which is visible amongst the large rounded pebbles of the beach.
In the 1830s a local landowner, Sir John Acland, created a small harbour where he imported coal from South Wales to power his estate and also a large lime kiln above the beach. In return he exported pit props made from trees grown on his estate, for use in the coal mines. Lilstock also became an important stop for steamers taking tourists from Burnham to Ilfracombe and Cardiff in the 1860s and 70s. Eventually the sea cancelled his lease, through a number of storms that occurred after the First World War.
As we find our way slowly across the boulder fields and the slippery wave cut platform, he returns to his foraging activities. It’s going to be slow progress taking the beach route but so much more fun than having to walk through fields on the inland side of Hinkley Point. There is also a frisson of excitement attached to braving the perils of rising tides and passing on the ‘wrong’; side of a nuclear installation. So much uncertainty along the coast. Love it!
Betty wanders off along the upper shore, whilst I head in the direction of another solitary figure further down the shore. He has the look of a geologist, or fossil hunter about him and I am sure there must be a story there. He is busy tapping at rocks on the foreshore and searching through the debris when I approach.
“Found anything of interest?” I ask, aware of course that he might not want to talk. Solitary fossil hunters can be protective of their patch and may not want to give away the whereabouts of their finds. However, this one is up for a chat and fills me in on the Geology and what he has come across so far, especially when I let slip that I studied Geology at University as an undergraduate.
“I was down on the beach a few weeks ago and came across a big old fossil and tried to chip it out of the bedrock. Unfortunately the tide was coming in and I had to leave it,” he admitted with a rueful smile on his face, “I went back a few days later but it had gone.”
I don’t press him as to whether he thought someone else might have ‘jumped his claim’, or whether it was just the sea which removed it. Either way, like a fisherman, he obviously missed out on ‘the one that got away’.
I leave him to his deliberations and decide to wander back up the beach towards some spectacular looking rock falls in the cliff line. As I catch up with Betty I am taken by the sight of long veins of crystalline rock that were injected between bedding planes in sedimentary strata a few million years ago. Long after these rocks were laid down there was significant tectonic activity in the area, probably when the Alpine mountain building period was busy forming the Alps and the Himalayas. Out here in Somerset there would have been a few ripples of this, with incredibly hot mineral-rich water forced up from deep in the earths crust. The dissolved minerals within it would have been precipitated in any gaps it could find. The cooled minerals eventually formed these slivers of marble-like quartz crystals in the bedrock, now revealed as the cliffs are slowly eroded by the sea.
The cliffs above us are not only subject to periodic rockfalls, which tumble off the cliff face, but if the sea erodes the weaker shales at the cliff base, then the whole cliff face above can slide down almost in-tact, as a rotation slip. These look like some sort of CGI creation made for the film Inception.
“Two beachcombers and their dog collecting driftwood in the shadow of Hinkley Point.”
“All that remains of Lilstock harbour wall.”
“The former Lilstock slipway is still visible at low tide.”
“Rockfall from the cliffs – don’t get too close!”
“The cliffs are made up of alternating weak shales and more durable limestones.”
“The rocks were stretched at one time, leading to ‘en-echelon’ tension gashes in the rock, which then filled with injected minerals to form veins.”
“Huge lumps of cliff have lost supporting rock beneath and have slid down as rotation slips”
We respectfully keep our distance from the cliff face and wonder if we can turn up any fossils amongst the debris below. But we don’t have the time or patience of the professional fossil hunter I spoke to earlier and we strike out across the shore towards the pier at Hinkley Point C. As I’m walking I note the existence of limpet (or other gastropod mollusc) grazing. Once the tide is high, they come out and wander the rock surfaces rasping off any algae that settle with their toothed tongues called radulae, before scuttling back to their safe havens as the tide falls.
We have to be careful walking here since the surfaces can be unstable pebbles to twist your ankle on, or slippery algae covered slates to break a leg or worse on. The slaty rocks look more like perfectly machined paving slabs.
The next strange geomorphological structure we encounter is a large field full of metre-wide stone mushrooms. They form a collection of pedestal rocks with a hard limestone capstone sitting atop a more easily eroded shale. The limestone was formed by photosynthetic bacteria some 200 million years ago and protects the shale below from the power of breaking waves. These structures are called stromatolites and can still be found in Western Australia in hypersaline waters. I recall being told about these in Geology lectures at university, so I’m beside myself with joy at coming face to face with one for the first time.
A little further along we encounter a fossilised ammonite. These spiral chambered molluscs were most commonly only a few centimetres in diameter, being a sort of a squid in a Catherine Wheel. The nearest we get to these fossils today is the Nautilus. This one is at least 2 feet in diameter. Some can be so big that geologists need a helicopter to lift them. If memory serves me right this is probably Titanites giganteous.
131405 “Every high tide brings fresh algae to settle on the wave-cut platform, with limpets or other gastropod molluscs grazing it with their radulae – rasping tongues.”
“The regular jointing of the slaty bedrock looks like well machined paving slabs”
“Fields of mushroom-shaped pedestals are stromatolites – fossilised structures made by photosynthesising bacteria.”
“ A fossil ammonite (a kind of cuttle-fish in a spiral shell) measuring 2 feet in diameter”
Shortly we pass under the pier erected before construction commenced on Hinkley Point C. Bringing material in by boat would have been much easier than by road (perhaps surprisingly the 500 tonne reactor pressure vessel was delivered by road, having been taken by barge to Combwich on the River Parrett).
Now we start to feel like we are trespassing as we carefully move along the wet, slippery, wobbly, treacherous beach. It being a Sunday not a sound comes from the otherwise busy building site where some couple of dozen tall crane jibs poke skyward. At night you can see the glow of the site from our cottage some 10 miles away. The absence of human noise and the nature of these bulky chunks of concrete and steel make for an eerie experience. Even more alarming is having to pick our way through a small stream which exits the nuclear site and crosses the beach. I make a mental note to give my boots a good wash when I get home. I don’t fancy wearing boots which glow in the dark!
By now the walk is becoming quite arduous. We may not have walked as far as we originally planned, but taking the beach route has sapped a lot more of our energy than the official one (or is it perhaps the proximity to radiation I wonder).
It seems to take forever to walk the length of the site and its massive concrete sea wall, but we do eventually climb back up onto dry land beyond Hinkley B reactor and start the final few miles of sea wall walking before finally arriving at our car at Steart.
The last time I was here was in February 1982. It was my last day of working at Nettlecombe Court Field Study Centre. I had celebrated perhaps with too much enthusiasm the previous night and had to make an early start carrying out sampling the muddy sediments in the intertidal zone here. I don’t remember much about it, but I do have the photos to prove it.
“Pier erected for landing materials for the construction of Hinkley Point C.”
“Worrying outfall from the nuclear power station – it is necessary to be vigilant and ensure no contaminated water can ever escape from the power station into the environment”
“Hinkley Point A nuclear reactors built from 1957, closed 1999, complete removal by 2091”
“Hinkley Point B nuclear reactor built from 1967, commissioned in 1976, closed 2022”
“Steart salt marsh – a large expanse of intertidal vegetation important for protecting adjacent land from the sea and sequestering massive amounts of C02.”