Weekly update – 17 December 2021
Christmas Spirit (and construction) is in full flow on site, so we thought it might be nice to share some highlights from the last year. Granted, we cannot include all the great things that we have discovered and achieved in just over a year but hopefully this will jog all our memories to reflect…
Last Christmas (I gave you my rainbow gravel)
On Christmas day 2020 we welcomed the Sospan Dau dredging vessel which rainbowed gravel onto the shore. This enabled us to make our working platform that extended out into the sea! What a sight this was a year ago, and haven’t we come a long way?
A Winters ‘Tail’
A highlight was our Southsea Coastal Scheme fox setting up home over the summer – and now we have a whole fox family on site!
All I want for Christmas (is a decent steel pile line)…
…and Volkerstevin has provided plenty of them! The winter months melted into spring as we pre-augered and drove 16-17m steel piles into the foreshore to make up the flood defence walls. It was then that we found unchartered discoveries with 17th Century walls and stone flooring preserved under the existing beach!
Jingle Bell Rock (armour)
Who could forget the HUGE amount of anorthosite rock Boskalis placed over the summer?! The rock armour is essential to dissipating energy from waves in storm surges and complements the defence of the new sea walls.
And to complete our Christmassy Southsea Coastal Scheme Spirit……
‘On the fifth day of Christmas Southsea Coastal Scheme gave to me…FIVE STEM EVENTS! Four weekly stories, three pile lines…Two egress steps.. and a brent goose up at Castle Field.’
So, friends of Southsea Coastal Scheme! Deck your Halls with Boughs of Holly (fa la la la la, la la la la) and be sure to Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas, enjoy the Mistletoe and Wine and remember the Auld Lang Syne.
Thank you for sharing the excitement of the flood defence project with the team in 2021, and we look forward to meeting you and sharing more of our important work with you in 2022. Stay safe….
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