The Bill is currently in its final stages in the Lords before receiving Royal Assent and becoming law.

Critics of the Bill say the measures, which will ban fishing in certain coastal areas, will not offer enough protection to endangered marine species.

The Marine Management Organisation will be tasked with marine-related issues, such as plans for offshore wind farms, and would become a centre of marine expertise.

Source: BBC News website

A viewing area has been set up at the Ocean Terminal to allow onlookers the chance to see the enormous $800 million cruise ship. A firework display will mark the departure of the ship. The Queen Mary 2, operated by Cunard, is 147 feet longer than the Eiffel Tower (984 ft) at 1,132 feet and is currently the World’s largest ocean liner (until the 225,000 tonne Oasis of the Seas becomes operational in November 2009).

Source: UK Press Association

UK viewers will be able to see the programme on BBC One, Monday 7th September at 20:30 or information about the programme is available on the BBC website.

Update 16th September 2009: The Environment Agency has responded to the Panorama program with their own short film which can be viewed below. You can also view their response to our blog post in the Comments section of this post.

The project website can be found at slowcoast.co.uk, and there is a regularly updated blog with additional detail on his trip.

The website has route maps, and interesting soundslide features which highlight artisans visited on his long journey. Well worth a look.

1. Blue Pool Corner (Gower, Wales)

A 12ft deep ‘tub’ with a perfect cylindrical shape. The pool stands at the east end of Blue Pool Bay, near to the sands of Rhossili. There are also the remains of a chapel on nearby Burry Holms island to explore, as well as a set of sea arches, and ancient caves that contain gold doubloons from a Portuguese wreck.

2. Dancing Ledge (Langton Matravers, Dorset)

On the spectacular stretch of coastline between Swanage and Lulworth Cove. The remains of the marble quarries provide access to a labyrinth of sea caves, inlets and plunge pools. Dancing Ledge forms a large flat seashore rock platform. The famous tidal pool was blown out with dynamite in 1906.

3. Treyarnon rock pool (North Cornwall)

Treyarnon cove is a family beach popular with surfers. To the right, on the rocks just below the youth hostel, there is a rock pool that is 30ft long and about 8ft deep in the centre.

4. Harkess rock pools (Bamburgh, Northumberland)

10 minutes to the north of the beach below the Bamburgh Castle castle ruins, you will find Harkess Rocks, where there is a string of natural plunge pools. ‘Gun Pool’ and ‘Spark Plug Pool’ are narrow channels, ‘Half Moon’ is crescent-shaped, and ‘Egg Pool’, is large, deep and oval.

5. Fingal’s Cave, Staffa (Fionnphort, Mull Scotland)

Boat trips to Staffa island and Fingal’s Cave are available from Fionnphort, Isle of Mull. The acoustics in this natural sound chamber inspired Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Hexagonal basalt columns rise up from the sea within the cave.

See the FT article and the Wild Swimming Coast website for full details and safety information.

Images:
Blue Pool Corner © Copyright Nigel Davies and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Dancing Ledge © Copyright mark green and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Treyarnon rock pools. © Jamsta. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire Wales is busy currently, as the filming of a new Robin Hood movie starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett takes place. The beach was also used in May for the final film in the Harry Potter series with a giant ‘shell’ cottage built on the sands.

A 800 strong cast plus 130 horses, are due to shoot a major battle scene for the Robin Hood film made by Universal Pictures at the Pembrokeshire beach. A fleet of boats for the battle are currently being assembled in Pembroke Dock and temporarily moored off Dale.

Part of the film is based around the seaweed hut near the main car park at the beach. Although the beach remains open to the public there will be road closures with nearby residents issued passes.

Permission to use the site has been granted by a number of organisations including the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, the National Trust and Pembrokeshire Council. A joint statement said: “We recognise that the filming will inevitably cause some disruption in the area as well as great public interest.

“We hope people will help us to accommodate the film companies and we hope that filming on this scale will bring numerous benefits to the local economy, both during filming and following through knock-on tourism spend.

“While it is difficult to quantify it is estimated in the region of £1m, including temporary employment, repeat visits by crews and cast, raising the profile of the area and use of local services – from food to vehicle hire, from laundry services to security.”

The park authority said it had worked with Universal Pictures to protect the sand dunes and beach. “The routes for access to the beach have been chosen carefully and fencing is in place to direct people,” it said. “Facility bases for the film crews have been selected outside of any Sites of Special Scientific Interest.”

Source:

BBC News website

The main reason for this was feedback asking why we couldn’t cover all of the British Isles, and we were indeed a bit constrained by the site title! So we will be introducing features on Wales, Scotland, Northern Island, Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands soon…

Other reasons were to get a slightly shorter domain name for ease of typing, and also the English-coast domain only included the .net version, and not the .com or .co.uk. We have a better hold on all variations of uk-shore.com.