Thursday 25 June 2009

Holderness villages

We had a ride out to the coast today and mapped four tiny hamlets in the process. The East Yorkshire coast is one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe, losing about 2.9 metres of cliff to the sea each year. We went to Mappleton just south of Hornsea and enjoyed a drink by the sea. There were a few people on the beach and it's not the holiday season yet, but as you can see in the picture there was a huge swath of empty beach to the south as far as I could see. I moved the coastline inland a bit, but I'm not sure of the best way to map the whole situation. It's too far for me to walk along the beach of the whole coastline and cycling on soft sand is right out, there is often no access to the cliff top and all existing aerial photos are out of date.

We completed Mappleton and Rolston on the way. On the way home we had a look at Goxhill and Seaton as well as a couple of minor roads. This is very useful because there is now a swath of Holderness that is pretty well complete from Hornsea southwards. The town of Hornsea will take some effort and there are a few bigger villages further north, but slowly the county is succumbing to the gaze of my GPS.

1 comment:

Gregory Marler said...

You could take sample points of where the beach/cliff goes out to, and then join them up to create the beach/cliff/coast- lines.
I suppose the hard point is the access, and maybe when you collect a point for the edge of the cliff top you have to take an estimate of how far the beach is out there. Just like you have to add a metre or two onto the cliff line as you don't want to take your gps dangerously on the very edge. Estimation can also be done from nearest access (behind the fence or what have you). It's not great accuracy but it makes the map look nice and as accurate as anyone else will know/check.