The North Sea Is Not What You Think

Stand on the east coast of Britain and look out at the North Sea. Flat, grey, finished. It is younger than the ground it sits on, and it is not the thing it looks. On the lowest tides at Cleethorpes you can stand on tree stumps still rooted in their own soil. A hundred and thirty kilometres off Yorkshire, the largest wind farm in the world is going up on a hill an ice sheet built. On the edge of a Yorkshire lake that no longer exists, people left antler headdresses and the oldest house yet found in Britain. And on a Norfolk beach in May 2013, the sea uncovered something that turns the whole story of this water round. This is a plain walk across what the sea covers, the way the ground and the record tell it. Where the tidy version and the measured version disagree, you get the measured one. The map is late. This is what is under it. #NorthSea #geology #Britain #prehistory