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Author Archives: solwayshorewalker
Hunting for ‘guggies’, and finding ‘canoes’, on the Galloway shore
We went to the Scottish side of the Solway Firth to hunt for a boring mollusc. Or, rather more accurately, for the empty shells of a marine snail, Natica monilifera, known variously as the Necklace Shell, the beaded Nerite, or … Continue reading
Posted in shells, tidelines
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, Luce Bay, Natica, shells, the Mull of Galloway, tideline
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The naming of stones
Nellie and Pintle, High Netherma and Maston; Metalstones, Archie and Popple scaurs. “The names go back a terrible long time,” Ronnie Porter tells me. They’re part of the oral tradition of the shore, and neither Ronnie nor his wife know … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, fishing, stones
Tagged boulders, fishing nets, rocky scars, Romans, shipwreck
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Coal reserves: the ‘profound contradiction’
Today in the Guardian, editor Alan Rusbridger explains why his paper will concentrate on climate change for the next few weeks: he regrets “that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will … Continue reading
Posted in coal, sea-bed & undersea, The 'Energy Coast'
Tagged 'keep it in the ground', Alan Rusbridger, climate change, coal, coking coal, undersea, West Cumbria
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Loom-stones or fishing-weights? (And the role of piddocks)
In my post on March 21st 2014 I wrote about an object I had found on the shore near Beckfoot, which one of my shore-walkers told me was a warp-weight or loom-stone; I subsequently saw similar objects used to keep … Continue reading
Posted in shells, stones
Tagged boring molluscs, fishing nets, fishing-weights, loom-stone, piddocks, Romans
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Seeing the sea-bed
‘The ground’s too rough – the shrimp-boats avoid it like the plague, it does too much damage to their nets’, says David Dobson, now retired from the NW-Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority at Whitehaven, talking about the sea-bed in Allonby … Continue reading
Posted in artificial reefs, Marine Conservation Zone, renewable energy, tide & wind, sand, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged artificial reef, current speeds, drop-down video, Marine Conservation Zone, octopus's garden, offshore wind-farms, scour pits, turbine foundations
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The balance sheet between blue and green
‘A thin blue line’. Of policemen edging a protest march? The blue halo of Earth’s fragile atmosphere as seen from space? No – in this case, a blue line that Robert Alcock painted along a sea-wall in Bilbao in 2011, … Continue reading
Posted in coal, The 'Energy Coast', tidelines
Tagged climate change, coal, sea-level changes, tideline
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Snippets 1: A different perspective – the film-maker’s view
My Solway Shore Stories deal mainly – but not excusively – with the southern side of the Solway Firth, and several of them are illustrated with aerial photos taken by Simon Ledingham from his gyrocopter. It’s a pleasure, then, to … Continue reading
Posted in Snippets
Tagged aerial views, coast, films, Solway Firth Partnership, train-spotting
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‘Trains and boats and … cranes’: the Port of Workington
Once upon a time you could – it was said – walk from one side of the Prince of Wales dock to the other across the decks of ships, and the Port of Workington employed 150 people. Now, there are … Continue reading
Posted in ports, The 'Energy Coast'
Tagged coal, containers, dock, gypsum, Iggesund, ships
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Tyrean Purple dye, Philip Henry Gosse, and the Bell Rock lighthouse
Puzzling about the link to Solway Shore-walker? It is the dog-whelk Nucella lapillus, the ‘boring mollusc’ of an earlier blog-post. On page 182 of Natural History: The Mollusca, published in 1854, Philip Henry Gosse writes: ‘From Mr Stevenson’s interesting account … Continue reading
Posted in shells
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, lighthouse, Seaside Pleasures, Tyrean Purple dye
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Dune walk (with one diversion)
My guided shore-walks are ‘vertical’, from the bottom to the top of the shore – we usually spend a lot of time looking at the animals near the low water mark, with diversions on the way back to see the … Continue reading
Posted in dunes, sand, tidelines
Tagged butterflies, dunes, lugworms, marram, sand, sandmartins, shore-walks, tideline
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Solway Shore-walker 