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Author Archives: solwayshorewalker
Strange animals of the Solway shore
This is a resumé of a short talk I gave at Bowness-on-Solway on Saturday 22nd January, as part of the event that launched the ‘Hadrian’s Wall 1900’ celebrations. I’m posting it here because some of the audience wanted to know … Continue reading
Posted in mud-shrimps, mudflats, Sabellaria, honeycomb worm, submerged forest
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A Solway small-holding: an update
I last wrote about our small-holding in NW Cumbria in May 2018, shortly after we had planted our ‘Three-score-years-and ten’ wood, including a hedge and a couple of thickets, on one of our fields. The trees have now had four … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, farming, smallholding
Tagged moths, ponds, small-holding, tree-planting
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Haematite in Eskdale
On the first weekend in October the annual ‘Keswick’ Show and Sale of Herdwick sheep is held in Mitchell’s Livestock Mart in Cockermouth. Our tup ‘Bonzo’ had been accepted for official registration in the breed’s Stock Book: his appearance – … Continue reading
Posted in geology, haematite, industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone and haematite, quarries
Tagged Herdwicks, iron ore, mines, raddle, Ravenglass
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Quicklime: Hot Mix
It’s May 2021, the latest lockdown for Covid has been eased and crossing the Border between Scotland and England is once more permissible, so I drive North to Canonbie where Alex Gibbons has his yard. I’ve known Alex since 2016, … Continue reading
Posted in coastal heritage, conservation, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns, quicklime
Tagged clay dabbin, hot lime, lime cycle, mortar, pigments, plaster
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Limestone: the Tata Shapfell kilns
The motorway sweeps down past the smooth rounded ‘sleeping elephants’ of the Howgill fells, down into the valley by Tebay, and then up again onto the moorland heights of Shap. Suddenly, incongruously, you see a tall vertical array of cylinders … Continue reading
Posted in industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns, quarries, quicklime
Tagged Maerz, Shap, steel, Tata
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Limestone: quicklime, tubs and ghostly kilns
Lime kilns are a feature of limestone country. Many are small, and slotted into hillsides and escarpments like eyes in a skull, their brows an arch of brick or stone. Others are taller more imposing stone-built structures, sometimes with fancy … Continue reading
Posted in coastal heritage, industrial heritage, LIMESTONE, limestone limekilns
Tagged railways, Warthole
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Skeletons: sea-sorted
Gently, the waves carry and deposit their offerings, seeking suitable places to pile them: fine black grains of coal in the hollows between ripples; grey-white tangles of hornwrack, heaped beside a log, the minute animals dead within their skeletal cells; … Continue reading
Posted in Found Objects, tidelines
Tagged bird skeleton, flotsam
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Limestone: Death assemblages
The boulders are the fossilised graveyard of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the shells of brachiopods, that lived then died about 300 million years ago. These tangled remains of former lives are what geologists call a ‘death assemblage’ [1]. A variety … Continue reading
Posted in fossils, geology, LIMESTONE, limestone fossils
Tagged Carboniferous, death assemblage, fossil brachiopods, fossil corals
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Limestone: ‘pavement’ plants
Great Asby Scar, in the Orton Fells on the east side of Cumbria, is one of the best limestone pavements in Britain. From Victorian times until fairly recently, areas of the pavement were plundered and damaged due to the fashion … Continue reading
Posted in LIMESTONE, limestone pavements
Tagged clints, ferns, Great Asby Scar, grikes, Romano-British
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Limestone: the language of pavements
Clints, grikes, karst, karren and kamenitsas – they are evidence of the power of water in its liquid or frozen state, the power that sculpts limestone to form ‘pavements’. Smooth surfaces, reflecting light from the sky when wet; slippery underfoot; … Continue reading
Posted in LIMESTONE, limestone pavements
Tagged Carboniferous, clints, Great Asby Scar, grikes, kamenitsa, karren, Westmorland Dales
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Solway Shore-walker 