There is a lovely road set alongside a beautiful stretch of Welsh coastline which, if predictions are correct, will no longer be lovely in the very near future. In fact, it might not be a road at all.
That’s because the A487 along the beach in Newgale in Pembrokeshire could one day soon cease to be a road which separates the land from the sea, but actually become a part of the sea itself. In 2014 part of the road was blocked off and submerged under water due to extreme weather. You can keep up to date with the latest Carmarthenshire news by signing up to the local newsletter here.
This happened again in 2017, and again in 2020 during Storm Dennis. Eight years ago, a study carried out found that these temporary knock-on effects resulting from acts of nature would most likely become permanent ones, and that by the year 2036 - less than 14 years away - the whole road would be no more. It would instead be an unseen and submerged ghostly reminder of a key access route that was stolen away by the rapidly evolving threat of climate change.
Read more: The beautiful remote Welsh village that used to have it all but lost everything
Along the A487 you’ll find a pub, a surf shop, a campsite, all currently protected from the sea - just a stone’s throw away - by a shingle bank, made up of small to medium-sized cobbles. But, if fears are realised, that bank will offer next to no protection in the years to come as the sea levels rise and make it redundant. Newgale isn’t the only seaside spot in Wales facing up to such a life-changing predicament. Fairbourne, in Gwynedd, is collectively looking at the waves over its shoulder - you can read more about that here.
In Newgale, it’s not just the businesses and the homes that line the A487 that this potential crisis concerns - the road is the main and quickest route between the large Pembrokeshire town of Haverfordwest and the city of St Davids. The lack of a direct route along the coast would pose a potential disaster for tourism not just in Newgale but in wider parts of the county, too.
There are plans in the works to offset at least part of this concern. The trouble is, they’ve been in the works for a number of years now. The proposal is to construct a new road inland from the existing one, further away from the rising sea and the possibly-soon-to-be inadequate shingle bank. The new road will bypass Newgale itself but still allow people to travel between the nearby communities of Penycwm and Roch, a couple of miles east of the coastline. It’s expected to cost up to £20m.
There are pros and cons to the new road, as outlined last year by the landlord of the local pub. “The area is a massive draw for tourists, and the creation of the new road might mean, particularly in winter, that people would not drive past the pub,” said Ed Coupe, who runs the Duke of Edinburgh which sits next to the A487. “In the summer we might be OK but in the winter I think people pass here and pop in for a coffee or a sandwich or whatever. Certainly this is a pub that can’t just survive on the summer trade alone. My fear is that if and when the new road is there, the existing one won’t be maintained.”
Of course, the projection that the existing road will be underwater as early as the next decade is merely that, a projection. Nothing is certain at this time, and it could be argued that spending millions on a new road that might not be a necessity any time soon isn’t the best use of funds in the battle against climate change.
As Bruce Sanderson, who owns a surf shop in Newgale, said previously: “A lot of people feel that it’s a lot of money to spend when a lot of other areas are going to be in more dire need. We are just a very small part of a huge issue where whole countries are going to be flooded and people are going to lose their homes.”
The future for Newgale is uncertain, as is the prospect of a new road further away from the rising sea. The whole project was thrust into some doubt last year when the Welsh Government announced a freeze on most new road projects until an independent panel carried out a review into Wales’ carbon footprint.
The government said it had “provided funding for the Newgale coastal adaptation plan and A487 route diversion over the last few years”. However, the government also said that the aforementioned independent panel - called the Roads Review Panel - was hoping to publish a full report on planned road schemes, which included the A487 at Newgale, this summer, which has now been and gone. When pushed on the matter this week, a spokesman said the results of the panel review were scheduled for publication “later this year”.
Pembrokeshire Council has said it has now formally submitted a report to the relevant planning department, and that it still hopes a new road could be open by 2025, although the authority seems a tad more unsure than it did in 2021. A spokesman for the council said: “We formally submitted the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Scoping Report for the project to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority (PCNPA) planning department in early August.
"The document includes what we know about the environment, based on our survey work and discussions with local people and businesses, and explains how we plan to assess the impacts and effects of the Project. PCNPA has been consulting with statutory consultees about the EIA Scoping Report, including Natural Resources Wales, other PCNPA departments, Pembrokeshire Council, and Cadw. The project team is expecting to hear back formally from PCNPA imminently.
“In our previous update, we said the project showed completion of the work by about the end of 2025, and this is dependent on consultation, statutory processes and funding. We were hoping that we could have provided more information at this stage, but we are waiting for some key updates from the Welsh Government that could affect the project – the most important of these is the Roads Review.
“The Roads Review Panel was asked by Lee Waters MS, Deputy Minister for Climate Change, to look at all the major road schemes proposed or in development in Wales to advise on when new roads are the right solutions for transport problems, when considering the climate emergency and Net Zero targets. The final report was expected at the end of June, 2022, but we now expect this to be published sometime this Autumn. Once the result of the Roads Review is known, we will then be in a position to provide a further update on the Newgale Coastal Adaptation Scheme.”
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