Sizewell beach exhibition
July 22nd - September 22nd 2023
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The North Sea
Often brown from sand particles, fringed by uncomfortable shingle beach, the North Sea at Sizewell is not a glossy brochure destination. And yet, year round, every Saturday at 10, hardy swimmers in bobble hats enter the water.
Cormorants and gulls fly past, seals occasionally pop up and sometimes, when the tide is very low, barbarous metal objects appear - remnants of WW2 defences.
2 posts rise up, 100s of metres offshore, one always surrounded by seabirds - wheeling, crying, settling. They are the inlet and outlet of one of the Sizewell B water cooling loops, functioning by gravity alone.
Dive in.
Suffolk Sky
The big open skies over Suffolk have many guises - serene, threatening, dull, dramatic. Always sensing the infinite.
At Sizewell you see the sunrise and moon rise over the sea. Sometimes the wind farms are visible on the horizon, sometimes sea mist softens the view.
Clouds shift and drift, squalls are visible far off but, in Suffolk, it never rains on Saturday. Painterly yet unromantic the huge sky comes with you as you walk up the beach, distorting distance.
Gaze on.
Sizewell Platforms
Close to shore, 2 unmissable structures bide in the sea. Loud with bird cry they signal high or low tide to the swimmers by the exposure of their legs. Rustily industrial, they belonged to Sizewell A Nuclear Power station's cooling system before decommissioning.
Set for destruction, these "islands of abandonment" are now colonised by Gulls, cormorants and red list kittiwakes. They remain icons in the seascape.
Stand by.
A wing and a prayer
Minsmere Chapel can be seen for miles around in the flat reedbeds North of Sizewell. First built as a monastery when the area was wetter did malaria send the monks inland to Leiston Abbey? The legend of the Minsmere Bells suggests so. They took much of the building material for the new abbey, leaving only the chapel.
Repurposed in the second world war as a pill box, what remains in a meadow of wildflowers is augmented by a stained glass window by Arabella Marshall.
Ruined.
Sizewell dunes
Captivating in the wind, the hardiness and colours of the marram grass at Sizewell reward contemplation. Criss-crossed by desire paths the dunes protect you from the sea breeze. Follow a desire path and crest the dune to suddenly hear the crash and suck of the shoreline. Sit quietly watching the sea, leaning up against the dune and spot a seal, be investigated by a pair of snow bunting.
Come in the moonlight to see your moonshadow, sit and star gaze on the makeshift bench, feel infinitesimally small and ephemeral.
Dream on.
Auspices
Summer 2022. One day there is a dead gannet on the beach, dropped from the sky, perfect and fresh. Over the next few weeks more appear. There are no local gannet colonies so what signs are these?
Bird flu: apparently 25% of the gannet population perish this year. For the first time there is a dead seal on the beach, too. Later a Muntjac. Fox skull, moth and beetle.
Omens?
Tank blocks
Delineating the Southern boundary of RSPB Minsmere nature reserve, a line of concrete cubes runs East-West from the Kenton Hills footpath to the sea. WW2 anti-tank defences, concrete's durability of 100 years is fast approaching, yet they endure.
Some are eroding, some are lichenified, all are watched over by the mechanical eye of EDF. What does it see every Saturday at 09:05 as a stream of up to 100 neon and lycra-clad parkrunners file past, glancing anxiously at their wearable tech watches and encouraged or berated by a marshall in a pink tabard. Before the last runner passes under the camera the fastest man (except once, woman) makes the return.
Dog walkers know to avoid this time of day. Will outsize scaffolding soon replace the EDF-eye as Sizewell C construction commences?
Run on
Wildflower Meadow
How unexpected. Protected by the dunes, scant metres from the sea, a wildflower meadow blooms in June in front of Sizewell B. Pyramidal and bee orchids, yellow rattle, devil's-bit scabious and viper's bugloss miraculously appear.
You could easily miss the orchids amongst the grasses at first. Your head is turned nearer the shore by yellow-horned sea poppy, rosa rugosa, sea hollies - once jealously guarded by Francis Simpson - and white campion. But once your eye is in, there is a carpet of them - rare, mysterious and gloriously ephemeral.
Bloom
Sizewell B
A pressurised-water nuclear reactor, in action since 1995, the iconic dome was built to resist a Boeing 747 crash. The buildings are painted blue and the pipes a subdued brick red: the design decision swayed by community input refusing to allow erection of another brutalist building like Sizewell A. Quadruple safety measures exist for every eventuality and a fish filter at the sea-water inlet ensures the third water-cooling system is not disrupted by a shoal or marine mammal.
Due for decommissioning in 2035 a deep geological solution for its waste is yet to be found. Plans for Sizewell C progress.
Power through
Sizewell A
Shut down in 2006, plans to demolish the Sizewell A turbine hall from Autumn 2023 start the change of landscape and will alter the sense of place engendered by the unmistakable concrete block. Lupins, gorse, parkrunners and dog-walkers all appear and disappear day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, monthly, annually but the power station endured for 40 operational years.
Sizewell goes about its business as it has for 100s of years, largely ignoring the looming edifice. Fishing, swimming, walking, running, cycling now, sea defences in WW2, smuggling farther back then. Will it weather the changes?
Hold on
Engelandvaarders
England sailers. Escapees from the Netherlands in WW2, 32 set off for the UK in small kayaks. 8 survived the trip, only 3 survived the war. The memorial at Sizewell beach to the fallen, erected by the survivors, is also an unofficial war memorial for the fallen from more recent wars. Poppies, crosses and ribbons appear.
An elderly Dutchman associated with the bereaved families recently cycled the length of Britain and made a detour to the memorial on his way home.
In Memoriam
The Beach
A line of fishing boats faces the shore. Some are derelict but winches and rollers and a life-saver ring still dot between the working boats. You have to get up early to see them out at sea, not far out, just by the Sizewell B water outlet marker pole, where the gulls gather.
Farther South at Thorpeness the eroding cliffs are sandbagged. But this is unsuccessful against the rising waters and the carpet bags appear along the coast wrinkled, empty, lifeless rubbish.
Today, you may wonder at the naming of "Sizewell Gap" but once, mighty cliffs stood guarding the entrance to the beach. Now only squeezing past parked cars avoiding parking fees at the end of Sizewell Gap Road reminds you of a narrow gully.
Noel fishes from boat IH89 and at Christmas he sets up a tower of lobster pots in his yard garlanded with orange buoys, tinsel and lights, topped with a star. His family run the café where they sell one postcard of Sizewell A under a blackening sky.
Looming
District Survey Laboratory
Defunct, derelict, once this secretive building assessed the area for nuclear fallout. When gas-cooled Sizewell A was operational the worry over radioactive gas leaks led to an entire operation to sample the air, soil and vegetation of the area.
That's all
Lovers' Lane
Turn down the unmade track marked by this great pine at the elbow of Lovers' Lane to find a small car park and a track into Kenton Hills. A mixed managed wood bordered by fields one side, marsh the other. The path leads you down to the sea at the Tank Blocks yet it's easy to get lost in the grid of paths marked by inscrutable red number posts.
This quotidian spot is also a memorial to the victim of an inexplicable lockdown tragedy. The pine could keep watch for up to 700 years.
requiescat in pace
Tacky Shades
Still in the landscape these unobtrusive small white sails sit atop a metal pole. They waft gently in the breeze. Their sticky netting designed to catch particles drifting by they would be collected from time to time by staff at the District Survey Laboratory in a plastic bag then tested for radioactivity - looking for evidence of any invisible gas leak from Sizewell A.
What remains