New Sea Defence Project

Last weekend I visited family in Wales. During this visit I went to see the newly completed sea flooding defence project in Aberaeron, Ceredigion. This is a place I have visited growing up, and therefore it is nice to see an effort to ensure it's longevity as a town. These defences use a series of flood gates, and a new rock groyne which extends further out from the harbour entrance than before. This has been found to work poorly with it catching material by longshore drift and clogging the harbour entrance. This development has also improved the inner harbour area, with an amphitheatre style seating area next to the existing footbridge. I find this development very interesting, even with the harbour entrance issues. The improved public realm areas and the improved/repaired existing landscaping has made the area feel very tidy and higher end as a visitor destination.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oak Sett Paving

Image
 This is an image of some Oak Sett paving I photographed on a visit to Blenheim Palace over the summer. There is also an image of a sketch I did to think about how the setts would be constructed and what a typical detail build up for them may be. This is a paving material which I hadn't seen many times before, and would consider using as a different material in my designs in the future where practical. The example I saw at Blenheim Palace had what appears to be a resin or tar pointing in the joints. These are laid wiht end grain visible as it is most durable. The sub base and layers of the construction of these setts would need to be at least slightly permeable as they would otherwise rot.
Read more

Alney Island: Site Visit

Image
 On Wednesday 1st October, I went to Alney Island for an initial site visit to take photographs, walk around, and take in what the site currently has to offer. The weather was fine, with the sun shining, and very little rain in recent weeks prior to this visit, meaning a supposedly very wet site in fact seemed very dry! Notable features on the site were a historic Telford bridge, longhorn cattle which are used to sustainably manage the site, strong existing vegetation cover, and a large road and railway running through the site which bring substantial noise with them. Notably, the footbridge to the Gloucester docks from Alney Island was very narrow, and the decomissioned sub-station brownfield sites could be in the way. There is also a very convenient mixed use cycle route through the centre of the site which is a historic railway route which connected to the lock and docks.
Read more