Groyne!

Thanks to longshore drift, the south coast of Great Britain is gradually working its way eastward one pebble at a time. Coastal defences have been put in place in Hastings in a vain attempt to keep our beach from drifting off in the direction of Dungeness, but that still doesn't stop the council from having to bring huge earth movers in every now and again to dig the beach up and put it back where they found it.

Another method of keeping the beach in position is the groyne. A groyne is a sort of fence running perpendicular to the coastline that attempts to keep the pebbles in position by limiting the amount of space that the pebbles have to move in. It usually means that pebbles get removed from the west side of the groyned off stretch of beach and end up piled against the east side, which means the beach levels on either side of a groyne can be wildly different. As today's dog has just found out.