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Author Archives: solwayshorewalker
Snippets 4: First notes – Hadrian’s Wall of Sound, Bowness-on-Solway
At 5.45am the tide was still on the ebb, standing waves (‘reestings’) corrugated the surface of the channel, and the only sound amid the weighty silence of the still air was the trilling of oyster-catchers. I walked, and waited, and … Continue reading
Posted in Hadrian's Wall, Snippets
Tagged haaf-netting, saxophone
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Snippets 3: plastic rubbish and a bathyscope
My new piece of kit as a ‘low-tide guide’ (a delightful title conferred on me recently by BBC Radio4’s Open Country) is a bathyscope; with a bathyscope one can peer beneath the ruffled surface of pools and find out what’s … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, Snippets, tidelines
Tagged bathyscope, marine litter, plastic rubbish
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Hobbling through Allonby with an Idle Apprentice
“Of course there was a reading-room. Where? Where! why, over there. Where was over there? Why, there! Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby
Tagged Alfred Waterhouse, Allonby, Dickens, literary connections, Natural History Museum, reading room, Wilkie Collins
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Snippets 2: A chance encounter, as lifeboat ’47-024′ leaves the sea
The man with the camera seemed to know a bit about lifeboats. We were standing on the dock at Whitehaven harbour, watching as a lifeboat was hoisted out of the water. I hadn’t known that was due to happen: I’d … Continue reading
Posted in ports, RNLI, ships, Snippets
Tagged Port of Workington, ports, RNLI, ships, Whitehaven
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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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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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