There’s a little place on the Norfolk coast that means something to me even though it is 150 miles from my home and I seldom go there.

Trimingham, near Cromer, happens to be the place where my ancestors lived before moving to nearly all parts of the globe.

Some of them make special journeys to the village but most do not because there is little to see apart from a church and a beautiful beach.

Trimingham is part of a coastline in East Anglia which is subject to much of the most severe coastal erosion in Britain.

It’s a problem that affects many other areas, and national attention has been focused on a small section of Sussex which has suffered spectacular cliff falls since the storm of February 14.

In the last month, there has been as much erosion at this beauty spot as would normally take place in seven years.

And visitors who have been going there in large numbers have been disappointed to discover access to the beach has been barred for safety reasons.

The National Trust, which owns Birling Gap and much other downland in Sussex, has been sounding warnings about its future for several years.

It is already clear that the café will not last much longer and the neighbouring buildings will soon be threatened.

There have been calls for the trust to save the site by putting in sea defences. But these would be enormously expensive and possibly ineffective. They would also spoil the natural beauty of the area.

The St Valentine storm gave a grim warning of further trouble ahead.

It flooded seafront arches in Brighton which have not been touched for 40 years and caused huge movements of shingle all along the coast.

The trust is warning that it will not be possible to save all of the seaside in Sussex. There are often big falls of chalk from unprotected cliffs, as at Seaford Head.

Even where protection has been put in place, gales and rain can cause cliffs to crumble, as happened near Brighton Marina in 2000.

It is almost certain that in time the sea will inundate Selsey, stuck on the most vulnerable of peninsulas, and that it will overwhelm Pagham harbour.

Looking east, there is likely to be repeated flooding at low-lying Pevensey, while soft, crumbling cliffs at Hastings have shown this year how quickly they can collapse.

Much of the coast in Sussex has been urbanised and defences have been put up in many areas to protect homes from storms.

But they will not last forever and there is the added factor that the South East, including Sussex, is slowly but inexorably slipping into the sea.

There are celebrated tales of towns that have been completely submerged such as Dunwich in Suffolk. Medieval Brighton, apart from St Nicholas Church in Dyke Road, is now mainly under water.

Millions of pounds have been spent over the years in protecting Brighton from the sea, at once its greatest friend and most implacable enemy.

The work has been largely effective and most people do not even think about it when they visit the resort in the fine, settled weather we have been enjoying this week.

But on a wild winter’s night, it is possible to stand on the shore and imagine the ghostly sights and sounds of the old town now lying beneath the waves.

A policy of managed retreat will be put into place by the trust and other responsible landowners where the cost of coastal defences can no longer be justified.

It will make Sussex a little smaller than it is today but will also allow for neighbouring tracts of land to be saved.

Managed retreat will be a far bigger operation on the east coast, where the village of Trimingham is one of many that probably have a limited life.

This has to be accepted as the most sensible solution to a widespread problem that will otherwise become more acute in the long term.