Slapton Sands
Slapton Sands are a long coastal sand bar forming a beach by the village of Slapton in the south of Devon. The sands run along the shore of the English Channel, stretching from Screte in the north to Torcross Point in the south, and lie within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The beach itself is not sand, but consists of small smooth pebbles ranging in size from ¼ inch to several inches.
Behind Slapton Sands is Slapton Ley, a nature reserve and good example of serial or ecological succession — the process whereby open water becomes reed bed and eventually, as silt and leaf litter builds up, woodland.
Geography
- Location: 50°17’14"N, 3°38’40"W
The beach itself is a good example of a bar: the material that makes up the beach was pushed up by the rising sea levels during the Flandrian transgression after the last glacial period (from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago). A similar process formed Chesil Beach. Beaches formed like this are reworked by coastal processes now but are not supplied by enough material to recreate them, should material be removed. This had terrible consequences nearby at Hallsands where most of the beach was removed as building material for Devonport dockyards, leaving the village exposed to storms. It was struck by a storm in 1917 and most of the village was washed away although no villagers were killed.[1]
Further north, the beach is known as Strete Gate and at the northernmost end is Pilchard Cove. The southern end of the beach is known as Torcross Sands.
A length of beach about a hundred yards south of Pilchard Cove is regularly used by naturists.[2]
The Tiger disaster
In 1944, the similarity of Slapton Sands to the coast of Normandy at 'Utah Beach' recommended them as a training area, and accordingly they formed part of the site of an American military training exercise known as 'Exercise Tiger'. In the early hours of 28 April 1944, a flotilla of nine German fast-attack boats managed to slip the Royal Navy blockade of Cherbourg and get across the Channel, where at dawn they attacked the American vessels involved in the landing exercises, killing 749 American servicemen.
A Sherman tank that was sunk in this action has been recovered and now stands on the road behind the beach at nearby Torcross.
Part of 'Exercise Fabius' took place a week after Exercise Tiger on Slapton Sands.
See also
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Slapton Sands) |
References
- ↑ "Hallsands". South Devon AONB. http://www.southdevonaonb.org.uk/explore/start-bay/hallsands/. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
- ↑ "Devon, Cornwall and Somerset's coastline lost millions of tonnes of sand after winter storms". Western Morning News. 22 September 2014. http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/devon-cornwall-somerset-s-coastline-lost-millions/story-22961907-detail/story.html. Retrieved 2016-07-15.