As reported recently in the Guardian, the beach at Lyme Regis is being rebuilt. This is the last stage of work to prevent parts of the town slipping down the hill and into the sea.

Not only are there diggers along the entire beach, but up the hillside behind.

These photos show low tide on Wednesday, when shingle from the shore line was being moved up the beach.

This morning we headed over there for breakfast to see the sand and shingle being landed. High tide was at 1109 but at 9.00 the first load had been transfered from the large ship moored in the bay onto one of the two smaller ships being used to land the materials on the beach.

You can see, in the centre of the picture above, a small ship alongside the larger ship, being loaded.

The first load brought in was sand from France.

The ships were brought right into the beach, with the bow held aground by constant propultion.

By the time the first ship had unloaded, a the second ship had loaded and was ready to nose into the beach.

This time the load was Isle of Wight shingle.

The end of the shingle banks, and the low tide line, are marked by a traffic cone on a very long pole…