A day trip to Bournemouth

To see my friend P. We saw so many lovely things I need extras and collages again:) On the beach at Hengistbury is a huge coastal engineering project to built out a much bigger groyne - to protect the bays and cliffs of Bournemouth and Poole from worse storm surges in the future. Fascinating to watch - each rock is about 15 tonnes.  They are dropped onto the beach - you can just about see the next ship to deliver, waiting offshore. Then lifted by a giant crane onto giant tipper trucks with giant tyres:) reminded me of playing with toy  lorries on the beach when my son was about 3. The 2 tipper trucks then take their load of 6 or 7 x 15 tonne rocks to the site of the groyne and drop them in place. The first extra is of some ‘intertidal reef cubes’ - my son has told me all about these - which will be placed on the groyne too, at intervals. They are shaped especially with a wide variety of different artificial replicas of environments likely to appeal to, and provide homes for, lots of different sea creatures. Made by a company in Torquay, they’re increasingly being included in coastal civil engineering projects. These kinds of thing cheer me up so much, when I get too focussed on all the terrible things.
Next is 4 scenes from the day - a. we had a nice lunch sitting outside at Hengistbury beach huts - which are famous for changing hands for crazy prices. Each one currently for sale is £450,000.  They did cost more a while ago! b. The beach, with some nice roses, and the tyre tracks of the tipper trucks. c. One of the cliffs they are hoping to save from erosion, at the top are many sand martin nests, and we saw dozens of sand martins flying about, and the returning to the holes to feed their young. Finally, a view of Christchurch harbour, which was our lunchtime view.  We saw a few birds there, including 3 white egrets. 
The final extra is really to remember the lovely array of flowers growing along our route - although none is unusual or exciting. Wallflower, buttercup, wild radish, Rosa rugosa, sea aster, hawkbit
I felt very lucky to have this nice day, with a good friend