It is a cold and bleak day here.
There are lots of towns and villages around the world that once existed,
but have been lost to the sea or under floodwaters.
But here, on the south-east coast of Britain,
there's a village that's still around but won't be for too long.
Up behind those cliffs is Covehithe.
It's a picturesque little village.
There's the ruins of a church more than 600 years old,
with a more recent church built inside.
And by more recent, I mean the little church is only 400 years old.
There's farmland, a few houses, a couple of dozen residents.
This has been a settlement for least a thousand years, possibly more.
And it'll be gone by the end of the century.
You can see on old maps just how much land has already been lost to the sea.
The cliffs here get eroded a little bit with every high tide,
steadily being pushed back and back and back.
There are warning signs to stop people from walking on top,
because the ground near the edge will be loose and could fall
with just a little bit of pressure from above.
And this has been happening for centuries.
It can't go on forever: at some point, no-one knows when,
the process should stabilise at a new equilibrium.
But no-one can model that far ahead.
For the forseeable future, the local council's management plan
estimates that the coastline will move inland by about four or five metres every year.
There's a lot of margin for error, but even in the best-case scenario,
Covehithe is gone in 100 years.
Worst-case, 30 years.
It won't actually crumble into the ocean: to avoid pollution, buildings around here
are demolished and taken away when their time comes.
And presumably someone will have to move the church's graveyard.
So why doesn't anyone save Covehithe?
The landowners here did offer to build their own coastal defences back in 2011,
to add breakwaters here as an experiment to see if the erosion could be slowed,
but they were turned down by the council.
This beach, where they'd need to build, is owned by the government.
And the government said no because...
the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
A little way down the coast is Southwold, home to a thousand people and a lot of tourism.
And the simulations say that if Covehithe stops eroding,
then Southwold would probably start.
Or at least, they'd need much, much stronger defences.
It's not practical to save every building everywhere:
this is miles of coastline and they'd need to defend all of it,
constantly, into eternity.
The council's plan is clear:
"it is not considered sustainable to attempt to manage the erosion".
I did ask both the landowners and the council for a comment,
but neither got back to me.
Perhaps because Covehithe isn't a tourist attraction,
and I don't think they'd want to be.
There are no amenities for visitors, there's no little tea shop by the beach.
But if you do happen to be somewhere in the area in the next few years,
it might be worth stopping by to see Covehithe... while you can.