THERE are more than 600 million of them on our shore.

Tens of thousands of them are now in back gardens and on mantelpieces all over the world as reminders of happy days.

Others formed the foundations for the garden makeover anti-lawn craze a few years back when decking and pots full of yuccas were the fashion.

Technically removing just a single item is against the law as Caroline Lucas found when she clutched one close to her heart while being sworn in as an MP.

There have even been amnesties with the authorities turning a blind eye to people willing to bring them back to their natural habitat.

They are the subject of much misunderstanding, even inexcusably by the locals. For instance, many still think they were brought in by man as an army of defiance against Mother Nature.

For others they are a source of constant inspiration, used in sculptures and even humanised with faces by artists.

Yes, pebbles are us. Tough, unyielding, beautiful and varied. A perfect reflection of the communities that border them.

No wonder they are the first up in our Joy of Sussex series. For some, pebbles will always signal disappointment. Holiday-makers with buckets and spades expecting golden sand will have to get back on the bus and head for West Wittering or Camber Sands. But for the rest of us they are a source of pleasure. Sand is for softies.

“Pebbles are wonderful,” says Dr Geoff Mead, lecturer in geography at the University of Sussex. “You can sit on them without getting sandy, you can sit on them on a windy day without getting sand blown in your sandwiches.

“They retain the heat of the sun, so they’re always nice and warm on a sunny day and the water drains away quickly, meaning you rarely get wet.”

Dr Mead won’t mind me saying he’s a bit of a pebble bore and thus ideally placed to tell us why they’re here.

“We have a pebble beach because we don’t have enough sand deposits offshore to be pushed up by wave energy and no sandy rocks onshore to be broken down. Where you see sandy beaches, such as Newhaven and Camber Sands, it’s because deposits of sand have been brought down river.”

If I get this right, we also have 75 per cent of the world’s shingle beaches in north western Europe because we were at the edge of the Ice Age which bulldozed screeds of flint into the oceans. And there are practical reasons we should be grateful for pebbles.

Dr Mead again: “If you hear the rumble from the beach, that is all that shingle absorbing wave energy. It is the best possible sea defence you could have. Put it another way, if we didn’t have pebbles we wouldn’t have Brighton because of the soft rock we are built on.”

Artist Raysto, who lives a pebble’s throw from Brighton beach, is another with cause to celebrate the hard stuff. He has an art and photography project called Pebblefaces, which is basically just what you’d imagine it to be.

He draws beautifully different faces onto pebbles from what he perceives to see in the stones and posts them on his tumblr and Instagram sites. He hides his miniature stony-faced portraits in Brighton’s nooks and crannies so they are intrinsically linked with his adopted home town.

Locals in their hundreds took part in his Great Pebble Dash as part of the Brighton Digital Festival this year, which was a variation on the theme with online clues pointing to Pebblesfaces for people to find all over the city.

Raysto says: “If someone were to ask me what are the things I like best about living in Brighton, the pebble beach would have to be right at the top.”

He admits this wasn’t his initial reaction when he moved here from sandy Cornwall.

“That all changed when I started examining the shapes, shades and patterns of the pebbles more closely. I discovered that most of the pebbles found in this region are formed of flint fused with different shades of petrified chalk, which makes for interesting shapes and a good surface for inks.”

Whether they inspire you to create like Raysto or you just wonder at the vital role they play in our environment like Dr Mead, there’s no doubting pebbles are a crucial part of what makes Sussex special.

As you read this, they’re out there now withstanding the waves on our behalf, that familiar reassuring rumble telling us all is well with the world.