Sir, The problem of diminishing sand deposits on Tenby’s South Beach, one of the best beaches in Europe, is linked to significant changes in the weather. Warmer winters and less aggressive winds have slowed down the creation of sand.

The sand is created from the denudation of the amazing high range of cliffs streching from Giltar to Angle Bay with other attractive bays and beaches all the along the way.

The sand is then slowly moved by underwater currents to what is or certainly was termed a classic ‘beach head bay’. This is where high movement of sand is trapped between two established rock formation natural promitories.

The complementary one to Giltar is St. Catherines Fort. The sand has its movement restricted to pass on and so it nicely piles up on the beach.

With global warming and milder winters, not enough sand is generated naturally by storms and winds, so there are less high seas and big rock eating waves.

More and more visitors today come in winter to enjoy the beauty of the Tenby area, whereas 50 years ago winter visitors were considered eccentrics and were scarce. After September in those passed days, the town reverted to its local activities, but with far more regular employment such as military camps and regional utility service offices, and the town served by buses was the shopping centre of a chunk of South Pembrokeshire villages. This scenario has long gone.

So what can be done to bring back the sand in volume? Dumping sand is expensive, although there is plenty in the area and it can be ‘blown’ into place at a high cost. Outgoing tides will however suck back the sand, as happened in the new Burry Port harbour and beach development on the other side of Carmarthen Bay. Much money has been spent to create a boating harbour and a beach, but dredging seems ongoing and unending at even more expense.

The former Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain, wanted to dam off the mighty River Severn, the most powerful flowing British river, originating in Plynlimon and made navigable up to Caersws by the Romans. It was the basis of many great towns from Shrewsbury to Gloucester.

This Hain ‘pet project’ in which he may have had a financial objective would have created the elimimation of all Tenby beaches as silt would gather and the movement of the tides would be so affected and reduced to sluggishness, that our beaches, and most others in the Bristol Channel, would be destroyed. We were so lucky he did not have his project activated.

The key solution is to do all possible to curtail growing temperatures in winter. However. my late mum in Tenby rejoiced at warm winters and had a wonderful retirement based on climate change. We recall some very cold winters in the 1950s and 1960s (1963 was pretty awful), but some stunning summers (1959 was simply tropical).

Volitility in sea movement is the reason why the vast expansion in renewable energy to cut back carbon emissions in supply of our electricity to the national grid is all about wind power. Sea or wave power is so marginalised. The big Swansea Bay project on wave power was shelved. You cannot trust the sea. It behaves strangely all over the world and more strangely today than ever with the global warming, as whole towns like Miami are under threat.

How to possibly get it both ways.....warmer seasons and mild winters with golden sandy beaches? Difficult to say the least.

Garfield J. Smith,

London and Tenby.