G.K. Chesterton once wrote a catchy verse which whimsically purports to explain why English country roads have so many twists and turns.
Before the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire.
And then come those infectious lines which always come to mind when I am lost.
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread,
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
Of course, I never thought to have the opportunity to use these lines in Weather Eye. But God, as William Cowper says . . . moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
And so it was, about a month ago, that Beachy Head collapsed into the sea. Enter Chesterton, stage left.
Beachy Head is a headland near Eastbourne, on the southern coast of England and about halfway between Dover and the Isle of Wight. It is 575 foot high and made of chalk, thus presenting a magnificent white facade. On January 9th, for no apparent reason, thousands of tons of the chalk cliff detached themselves and fell, extending the beach below more than 100 feet into the English Channel.
Yet there always is a reason, even if it does not seem apparent. Some experts have suggested that the collapse was caused by the previous heavy rains, followed by a sharp frost which may have made the moisture inside the rock freeze and then expand, causing the cliff to crumble.
Then again, it may have just been the whips and scorns of oceanic time, delivered by the sea.
As waves in a storm advance against a cliff, they crash against the rock with a force of up to 20 tons for every metre square. With each wave, water is forced into cracks or joints in the surface of the rock; the air inside is compressed, and this pressure makes the cracks widen.
Meanwhile, the waves pick up pieces of eroded rock and hurl them back against the cliff, to break off more rubble to become the ammunition for the next attack.
As time passes, notches are cut into the base of the cliff at the zone between high and low water. Ultimately, the cliff is left perilously cantilevered until, with some small stimulus - a touch of frost perhaps - it may collapse into the sea, like Beachy Head.