We met the “beast” on the shore of Hanö Bay at the beginning of the year. The storms had moved enormous amounts of sand into the sea and an old tree stump had been exposed. Then the cold and water created the “beast” of ice that sparkled in the January sun. A few days later it was plus degrees again and the “beast” was gone: it had returned to the waves of the sea. The stump was firmly fixed and could not be shaken. Probably the remains of a tree that once grew here when the shoreline went further out into the bay.
We returned to the site this summer and could not find the stump. It is once again hidden in the sand washed up by the waves of the sea. The former beach is slowly being regenerated, but it is hard to believe that the previously overgrown beach fringes will ever return.
We have had the year to get used to the new beach landscape. It is with great sadness that we remember what it looked like before the storms. The exciting “rooms” along the beach are gone, but the beach scenery is still magnificent. Time heals all wounds and eventually this new landscape will be what we all remember as “paradise by the bay of Hanö”.
Read about last winter’s storms:
