The final stage of the coastal protection berm at Fairlight Cove started recently. A large barge the Stema Barge II is moored offshore that is stated to be capable of carrying 21,000 tonnes of Larvikite an igneous rock similar to granite that comes from Norway.

Having checked the tides I made my way up to the cliff path east of the village to watch the smaller barge the Charlie Rock towed by the Afon Goch come in and was surprised to see some sort of landing craft leaving the beach having dropped off a dump truck. I had assumed that the heavy plant that was on the beach at Pett Level would be tracked round at low tide, so I rushed round to Cliff Way to have a better view when it returned with it’s next load.

Here comes dump truck no 2

The landing craft is called Severn Sins from the port of Bideford and a little research has revealed that it is a LCU (landing craft utility) Mk9 which were carried by the Amphibious Assault Vessels (4 each) HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid (not the Invincible as previously stated here, many thanks to Pete who served on the Fearless for correcting that) that saw action in the Falklands.

The last load. Some of the freshly unloaded rock can be seen just left of the excavator boom

It seems that the Stema Barge II will be empty tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how many loads it takes to complete the works.

Short video of the Charlie Rock barge unloading, shame about the sound, it was windy!