Ampersand want to develop Carlyon Bay, St Austell’s local beach. This is all well and good and long overdue. The halcyon days of the coliseum are long gone but we of a certain generation all still remember them with fond affection. Many of us lost our innocence in the moon shadow of the Dracula boat and/or broke our collarbones jumping from ‘the stack’ into two inches of water, sometimes on a good night, one might achieve both.
Now, however the innocence of our youth is long gone and so has the innocence of dear old Crinnis. The development proposal of ampersand has no room for locals around it, nor within it. The proposed sea wall will cause the beach to erode due to the increase in breaking wave energy at the top of the tide and the sand deposited offshore will cover the delicate sea grass beds and their fragile fauna which the developer has not even surveyed nor knows exists despite advice from consultants to check. Now Pentewan is basically fenced off to locals and parking for the beach is miles away we are left with just a few, small, overcrowded options.
I know something needs to be done at Crinnis and I would support almost anything that included locals at its heart rather than as an afterthought. The bullish, bullshit approach of the current developer has turned the idea to ashes; If Ampersand had treated the consultation process more seriously they would still have a site worth millions plus the good will of a whole community (and a project that might actually go ahead) - a salient lesson for all.
Ah well, onward and upward. They say, looking to the future, we should all think of our grand children and whether we will leave them a world fit to inhabit. I would be happier knowing that my son would grow up in a world that had Gossips (formerly Quazars), the Ocean Suite, the only 50m pool in the county, a great sandy-carpeted arcade and possibility of exciting and indiscrete fumbling with the opposite sex after a bottle of Merrydown on a summers evening. Yes, even this cynical old academic yearns for such small patches of harmless youthful anarchy...
However in my case the anarchy was sneaking doughnuts into the library and the fumblings were in the nude photography section.
2 comments:
Your nostalgia is touching, Professor, as are your fond hopes for the future. Sadly, though, the latter are misplaced since the way things are presently proceeding, the only thing to find itself in thesand at Carlyon bay will be the locals' heads. The fact is that Mid Cornwall needs money much more than it needs another beach.
And as for Pentewan being 'more or less closed to locals', as you undertake the hellish journey from the car park to the sand, spare a thought for those from 'upcountry' who have travelled much further to spend their hard earned cash and brief holidays in our friendly region.
Spare a thought for nature instead,Julie,which will of course determine these matters more surgically than any planning inspector:
http://www.nowpublic.com/concrete_cornwall_s_coast_ccc_0
Best way forward:
http://www.nowpublic.com/concrete_cornwall_s_coast_ccc_5
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