234
BLAKENEY POINT, NORFOLK
of this water discharges on the lee side, carving out ravines every few yards, and shooting out the shingle displaced in the form of talus fans on the foreshore. After the high tide of 14th September, 1916, scores of these ravines appeared, resembling in all respects except size those of the Chesil Beach. The ravines were developed on the steep lee slope, reaching up about 6 feet from ordinary high-water mark, 2 to 3 feet deep, and 3 to 4 feet wide. A man lying down could get excellent cover in one of these ravines; and, indeed, it might have been supposed that soldiers had been practising some new system of entrenchment. The next high tide was some 2 feet lower than the tops of the ravines, and its effect was to obliterate their lower two-thirds by lateral shingle drift. The upper limb of each ravine, being above the influence of this tide, persisted as an oval hole about the size of a clothes basket. Had one not seen the ravines freshly made, the “clothes baskets” must have been quite unintelligible.
   The Marams.—The stretch of beach, a mile long, extending east from the Watch House to Cley beach, is perhaps the most interesting part of the area from an engineering point of view. It is known as the “Marams”, though no blown sand enters into its construction. As, however, a few tufts of Marram Grass occur here and there on this section of the main beach, it is quite possible that the name is really significant of the presence here at some remote period of Psamma-covered sand dunes.
   The great features of this section of the beach are:—
   (1)	The numerous hooks which it bears along the lee side;
   (2)	The advanced phases of marsh building shown by the
        land between the hooks; and
   (3)	The mobility of the main beach in relation to the distri-
         bution of the vegetation, more particularly the Suaeda bushes.
   The Hooks, which are six in number, are some of them simple and some compound, the latter consisting each of two or three hooks in lateral contact. The relief of the ground makes it possible clearly to distinguish the real nature of these