14
The Purbeck Gazette
Brighten Up Your Life In May! A selection of beautiful items, all available to buy from our local retailers!
Bulaggi Bag, Scarf & Sunglass set. Golden Girl, High St & Station Rd, Swanage. £78.90
Sanrio Hello Kitty Plush. Ever After, Institute Rd, Swanage. £14.99
Dualit Toaster. Purbeck Electrical, High St, Swanage. £137.00. Available in Red, Cream, Black, Turquoise, Citrus Yellow, Lime Green
Jelly Kitten Hoopy Loopy. Cloud 9, Institute Rd, Swanage. £12.99.
Van Dal ‘Bali’ Sandal. Golden Girl, High St & Station Rd, Swanage. £60.00
CHUG SAYS... T
Sanrio Hello Kitty Tote Bag. Ever After, Institute Rd, Swanage. £14.99
Aimbry lighting chandelier. Purbeck Electrical, High St, Swanage. £95.00. Wide range available.
Zoobles! Cloud 9, Institute Rd, Swanage. Range of prices, aprox. £5.99.
beach ‘ownership’ has always been rather distasteful to us. Like mountains and moors, the wild places should belong to everyone.
Being Chairman Chug became quite tiring - all that work and organising everything all day. I now revoke my leadership over the People’s Republic Of Purbeck and will return to lounging in the sun, pondering life’s mysteries....
Chug Resigns Power...
he Chug and I are exhausted. Running the Gazette is not the soft option we imagined; hobnobbing with local bigwigs and two- hour journalistic liquid lunches at Tawnys are but a figleaf of our
imagination.
The romance of journalism has been binned somewhere along the line and burning the candle at both ends hunched over a VDU just digs too deeply into quality time spent sipping Ringwood at the Black Swan which, in case you didn’t know, happens to be the oldest pub in town. But a word of warning here; don’t for goodness sake make the mistake I made and confuse the pub’s vintage with that of the landlady… the only positive aspect I can report is that the black eye is healing nicely and my doctor tells me the other swelling will subside eventually.
However, the Chug and I presented ourselves at the Gazette office – he with his tail firmly between his legs – and begged the girls to get back in the saddle. Of course, they milked the situation for what it was worth and made us squirm, but relented in the end and the Gazette is now back in safe hands. I’m sure Mr Hollister for one will be relieved.
A letter received following my lyrical waxings on the joys of the freedom of North Beach – which for me begins precisely at the termination of the concrete promenade – has prompted me to research a subject I’d been saving for later in the year, notably the ownership of beaches. The Chug and I stand considerably to the right of socialism but still, the concept of
Needless to say, the legal aspect is a minefield, especially regarding the foreshore – that damp area of sand between mean (average) high and low waters. The recent Equinox – when day and night are equal – illustrated this perfectly, exposing a huge area below the groynes of which the Chug and I took full advantage along with scores of other dog walkers. Chug and I can’t resist a little dig, and would like to gently remind you folk that the spring equinox coincides with the ancient pagan ritual of Eostre, the root of words such as oestrogen, a celebration of rebirth which the christian interlopers bastardised into Easter.
In the light of this it is interesting that one of the earliest cases to set precedent involved Llandudno urban district council representing beach lessees in 1899 seeking to restrain a C of E zealot from conducting sermons on the foreshore. The defendant claimed his calling placed him above the law.
The upshot of the ruling was that the foreshore does not extend the same rights as a public highway and the public do not have access to the foreshore for bathing or amusement, only for the purposes of fishing or navigation. However, users of obnoxious and antisocial jet skis please note Curtis v. Wild (1991) further defined navigation as ‘planned movement from one place to another for the purpose of transporting persons or cargo… not messing about in boats’.
No definitive ruling has appeared in the interim and it has become generally accepted that while part of a beach can be leased it is entered in Hansard that the majority (55%) of foreshore ownership lies with the Crown. The CROW ‘Freedom to Roam’ Act of 2000 failed to provide a definitive ruling on beaches, stating wimpishly that it does not provide for access to the foreshore, but gives the Secretary of State the right to extend such access. Hmm. My guess is that if you are on a ‘private’ beach below mean high water the only person who can tell you to b*##!r off is the Queen, bless her, or a Crown Estate representative.
If anyone can produce a lease stating the contrary the Chug and I would be delighted to see it.
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