Why was Didcot "A" Power Station Demolished a Columnist Asks?

at which point I said there is a 5000 year old Submerged forest  just down the coast at Borth and that the sea has been rising or the land has been dropping for at least those 5000 years, indeed the are tales of there being a Welsh Alantis  more reclaimed land that was lost when the sea gates were left open.

I agree with the submerged forest etc (some of my younger years were spent in West Wales so I'm very familiar with the accounts of Cantre'r Gwaelod  and so on) - but I suspect that the conclusion that the sea in the area has been continuously rising or the land dropping for those 5000 (or whatever) years  might not be correct. If I recall my O-level geography field trips (a little further down the coast at Pwll Du if my dim memory serves) when we studied amongst other things wave-cut platforms - the explanation was that they persisted because the land was currently rising (or the sea falling) at a similar rate to the erosion of the rocks by the waves - and the explanation we were offered for that is that the entire British Isles are still slowly returning to equlibrium after the last ice age dumped billions of tons of ice predominantly to the north/west and so caused the West and North coasts to sink and the South and East coasts to rise. Once the ice melted things (very slowly) started to return to normal - so we now see the South & East coasts generally sinking and the West and North rising - to which any changes in absolute sea level would have to be added of course. Of course the absolute sea level would have been very significantly lower during ice ages (which probably accounts for 'drowned city' legends from many parts of the world, not just Wales) and would then have returned to "normal" quite rapidly at the end of the ice age. To assume that things must have followed a 'straight line' from the days of Seithennyn to now, I fear might be an over-simplification.

  - Andy.

at which point I said there is a 5000 year old Submerged forest  just down the coast at Borth and that the sea has been rising or the land has been dropping for at least those 5000 years, indeed the are tales of there being a Welsh Alantis  more reclaimed land that was lost when the sea gates were left open.

I agree with the submerged forest etc (some of my younger years were spent in West Wales so I'm very familiar with the accounts of Cantre'r Gwaelod  and so on) - but I suspect that the conclusion that the sea in the area has been continuously rising or the land dropping for those 5000 (or whatever) years  might not be correct. If I recall my O-level geography field trips (a little further down the coast at Pwll Du if my dim memory serves) when we studied amongst other things wave-cut platforms - the explanation was that they persisted because the land was currently rising (or the sea falling) at a similar rate to the erosion of the rocks by the waves - and the explanation we were offered for that is that the entire British Isles are still slowly returning to equlibrium after the last ice age dumped billions of tons of ice predominantly to the north/west and so caused the West and North coasts to sink and the South and East coasts to rise. Once the ice melted things (very slowly) started to return to normal - so we now see the South & East coasts generally sinking and the West and North rising - to which any changes in absolute sea level would have to be added of course. Of course the absolute sea level would have been very significantly lower during ice ages (which probably accounts for 'drowned city' legends from many parts of the world, not just Wales) and would then have returned to "normal" quite rapidly at the end of the ice age. To assume that things must have followed a 'straight line' from the days of Seithennyn to now, I fear might be an over-simplification.

  - Andy.