On their left, to the west, bare cracked slabs of concrete fringed the road like fallen dominoes. Building foundations had no scrap value. They were always the last to go. Beach scrub flourished everywhere: salt grass, spreading mats of crisp glasswort, leathery clumps of reed. To their right, along the shore, surf washed the stilts from vanished beach homes. The stilts leaned at strange angles, like the legs of wading flamingos.