A seemingly indestructible object, initially thought to have been an explosive device, has been found on a Norfolk beach - and no-one knows what it is.
A member of the public called in the Coastguard after spotting the rod-like item sticking out of the sand just south of Cart Gap, near Happisburgh, at 4.45pm on Sunday.
Pete Revell, rescue officer from the Coastguard’s Bacton Team, said the tide then washed over the object, but a photo of it taken earlier sent alarm bells ringing.
Mr Revell said: “We sent the photo to our control room and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), and they said they didn’t like the look of it and wanted to investigate.”
The Coastguard, along with the army’s EOD bomb squad from Colchester, returned on Monday at low tide.
Mr Revell said: “We cordoned off the beach. The object was still sticking out of the sand a little bit and EOD dug around it. The said it wasn’t dangerous, wasn’t ammunition in any way. But the problem is we can’t remove it. It’s got a long metal rod coming from it and we don’t know where that goes.”
Mr Revell said a “big, burly” bomb squad team member unsuccessfully tried to cut the rod.
He said: “It made an indentation on the bolt cropper and didn’t mark the metal rod. Those bolt croppers can usually go through hardened steel.
“It’s made of some sort of material but we don’t know what it is. Nobody seems to have any idea.”
Mr Revell said they had no choice but to leave the object in place, with Coastguard tape marking its location.
He said: “At the moment it isn’t really dangerous.
“We think the rod goes under the rocks, and if you cut it off you’re going to have a bit of metal sticking out that’s dangerous in itself.”
Mr Revell said the find would likely go down as one of the more bizarre call-outs the Coastguard was asked to deal with.
He said: “It could be buried within a couple of weeks and we’ll never see it again. At the moment the sands are very low in that area.”
After the Coastguard posted about the find on social media there has been some speculation as to what the object could be. One suggestion is that it is part of a fossilised whale, while someone else suspected it was a firework from the 1970s.
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