14th December 2021, Embleton Bay, 8am
Here in good time for a nice sunrise...
The Embleton burn has taken a different path recently where it meets the sea by the golf clubhouse. A lot of WW2 anti-tank blocks are visible for the first time in many years. I was pleased to find a date written in the cement by one of the Home Guard who cast the blocks in 1940. The rest of the date is intriguingly hidden under the water and sand. I like to think it was inscribed with the tip of a bayonet but I may be getting overly romantic! Also visible is a good length of the steel rope that once linked all the blocks. It’s rare to see this nowadays. There’s also the remains of a small pillbox built of cement sandbags that was perhaps hidden in the line of blocks. There was originally a double row of these blocks guarding this weak point in the dunes against the invasion threat. After the war several of them were moved up the beach a bit to help reduce erosion of the dunes. Those ones are buried under sand right now but appear from time to time and have lots of carvings on them too.
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