Sandcastles and striped cliffs, Bombings and Strike forces

Henwatch; a visit to Hunstanton and the geology of the cliffs; Consequences of POTUS actions in Syria and offshore from North Korea.

One egg eaten and another collected during todays's Henwatch before we set of with S & L to Hunstanton Old Beach. As this was anticipated to be the hottest day of Spring, before an abrupt decline in temperatures tomorrow, many others had the same idea and we his the queues just before bypassing King's Lynn. We therefore diverted onto minor roads parallel to the jammed A149. Entering the rolling Norfolk countryside, we cruised through picturesque villages and the green (and rape yellow) Spring countryside.

Anticipating a crush at the beach cafe, we stopped off at the King William IV Country Inn and Restaurant in Sedgeford, purely by chance, and treated  ourselves to a roast Sunday lunch. We arrived and hit the beach refreshed. S was introduced to the essentials of any beach visit, including paddling, building and manning sand castles till the incoming tide finally forced a retreat, and dam building. The brisk breeze whipped our clothes and gave the offshore kite-surfers the chance to race and tack across the choppy water, occasionally leaping and become airbotne, so we retired into the less breezy area close (but not too close) to the cliffs.

The cliffs at Hunstanton have a characteristic orange, red and white banding from bottom to top, as can be seen in the picture above. The orange is the 108 million year old Carstone formation; the red is the 101 million year old Hunstanton formation and the white is the 99 million year old Ferriby formation. These layers were created as sediments, when the sea level was 200m higher than present possibly reflecting a combination of extreme greenhouse conditions and heightened plate tectonics in a period called the Late Cretaceous. The Hunstanton and Ferriby formations are rich in fossils and when scouring the fallen rocks you might find ammonites, belemnites, echinoids, brachiopods, bivalves, sponges, worm tubes, corals and crustacean burrows.

After a tea and ice-cream at the cafe at on the cliffs above the beach, we set of home, this time going along the north coastal road, through Brancaster.  We passed two of the unique round towered churches, before heading inland into the hills leading to Fakenham and Swaffham, eventually returning to the flat plains of the Fens.

Condemnations of President Trump's action in Syria were mounting with warnings from Russia and Iran of consequences because, ironically, of a 'red line' being crossed. In the meantime, The POTUS had also ordered ordered a navy strike group to move towards the Korean peninsula, due to growing concerns about North Korea's missile program. Now that China's President Xi Jinping had returned from the summit in the US, it appears that apart from a get to know one-another session, not much was decided. How are the Chinese going to interpret the surprise attack on Syria during the Chinese President's US visit and overshadowing it, and the redirection of the US navy strike group back to the seas off Korea? Global tensions seem to be ratchetting up.