Bunn Leisure has embarked on a huge project to import 93,000 tonnes of quarried granite from Norway at a cost of £17 million, but they are not going to be used for fancy landscaping or any building project.
The leisure company is instead shipping the rocks across the North Sea to its West Sands caravan park in Selsey, West Sussex, as part of a project to protect its beach that is so popular with caravanners and holidaymakers.
As coastal protection projects go, this is the biggest of its kinds carried out by a private company in the UK, but Bunn is hoping that it preserves the future of its beach, preventing erosion and the ever encroaching sea.
In 2008, huge storms wreaked havoc on the holiday park, destroying holiday homes as a flood invaded the site. The new project is designed to stop that happening again.
The rocks are now being delivered by sea from Norway’s Larvik Quarry and will be piled up to make ‘breakwaters’ along the beach.
Once they have been put in place, Bunn Leisure will then spend time restoring the shore and a staggering 115 deliveries each of 3,000 cubic metres of sand and gravel will be pumped along the coastal strip to create a shingle beach worthy of the four-star holiday park.
