Over-reaction that spoils it for everyone at Cooden Beach - August 8

That is why the short stretch that is Herbrand Walk had become a popular meeting-point for wind-surfers and other sea sports enthusiasts.

Never was the old, old saying "You never miss what you have got 'til it's gone" more true than at Herbrand Walk.

Where cars and camper vans would congregate carefree on the beach itself has become a vehicle clampers' paradise.

Worse, a sewage pumping station fault '“ admitted in court by Southern Water '“ has further damaged Cooden Beach's reputation by attracting unwelcome national publicity in a Sunday Times article on the nation's most polluted beaches.

There is not a little irony about Cooden's current predicament, brought about in part because a section of beach is not in public ownership but is privately owned.

Ever since Christmas, Rother District Council had been chasing the land-owner in a bid to rid the area of a traveller who, with dogged persistence, remained living on the beach.

She has now gone. But in her place comes over-reaction.

The charges imposed by the parking enforcement company acting for the owners make those imposed on the unwary at Ravenside seem positively benign in comparison.

Woe betide any wind-surfer, sun-lover, bather or boater who fails to observe that notices fixed to the railway line fencing on the north side of the road or a solitary sign attached to a pole in the shingle on the south refer to what generations of Herbrand Walk visitors had become accustomed to as free parking.

The parking company's explanation for its draconian measures is that the land-owner has been effectively told by Rother to police the beach.

Significantly, the Rother chief executive says this is not the case.

So, visitors who have been accustomed to enjoying the delights of Cooden Beach have a double reason to be on their guard.

A chastened Southern Water has assured Magistrates that it has put measures in place to ensure that the pumping station fault which spewed raw sewage onto the beach in last year's damaging incident cannot happen again.

But until there is a change in the law which requires enforcement companies to make their activities abundantly clear to would-be parkers, the days when it was possible to pull up at Herbrand Walk and enjoy a seaside stop are, sadly, over.

For that, visitors can blame a traveller who obstinately refused to keep travelling.