Low tides uncover echoes of a prehistoric landscape on sand

Eerie 'ghost' formations have appeared on a Welsh beach, giving a fascinating insight to the country's prehistoric past. Andrew Forgrave reports

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Peat pavements were revealed on Warren beach this week, pockmarked with prehistoric animal footprints

WINTER storms have revealed astonishing relics of the past on a Welsh beach.

On one part of the shoreline at a private beach below a luxury holiday park on the Llŷn Peninsula was the spectral outline of a wooden vessel. On another was the eerie remnants of a submerged forest.

The discoveries in 2013 soon disappeared back into the sand at Warren beach, Abersoch.

After more winter scouring in 2018, a team of researchers returned to find the site was even more astounding than first supposed.

At the water's edge was peat “pavement”, heavily ridged and peppered with prehistoric animal hoof prints.

Some had been left by roe deer or sheep, other appeared to be the imprints of aurochs, an extinct cattle.

Here and there, time-blackened tree stumps poked up from the mud between fallen trunks and branches.

Also discovered were the possible remains of wattle hurdles, perhaps laid down to form an ancient trackway across the peat.

In places, there were clear signs of peat cutting using spades, similar to rectangular marks preserved on Tywyn beach further south. This activity was thought to be more recent, carried out mere centuries ago.

In a place where the wealthy now come to sunbathe and watch yachts glide across Tremadog Bay, a wooded habitat once existed around 7,700 years ago. Where there are now sandbanks, bass and dolphins, there were rivers, marshes and forests full of deer, pigs and even wolves.