Author Archives: solwayshorewalker

Piloting a ship up the Firth to Silloth

Posted on April 1, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

You have probably never thought what  it would be like to pilot a ship: to be in charge of, say, a cargo vessel with a hold-full of sticky molasses, that is about to enter the narrow dock gates of a … Continue reading →

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The Walls of Parton

Posted on March 22, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

‘Are you looking for the old port?’ The man seemed to have appeared from nowhere, yet he was tall and strongly built, white hair sticking up straight, not easy to overlook. ‘Port?’ I was bemused – I’d been poking at … Continue reading →

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Freshwater mussels in the West Cumbrian coalfield

Posted on February 26, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

The late Norman Hammond once told me that he used to go out in his boat to count the basking sharks when they came into the Solway. One time, he was motoring off Fleswick Bay near Whitehaven during a coal-miners’ … Continue reading →

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What’s been happening at Robin Rigg? An update

Posted on February 22, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

Live shipping maps – watching vessels move around the seaways in real-time – can become addictive. I can easily be distracted by Danny Ferris’s Solway Shipping website with its live coverage, photos and notices of the ships that are due … Continue reading →

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From ‘killing field’ to wetland and woods: Watchtree Nature Reserve, Cumbria

Posted on February 17, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

From the hill at Watchtree Nature Reserve you can look across to the upper reaches of the Solway Firth, the Borders and, to the East, the Northern Fells. It’s early February and the snow-coated top of Skiddaw is glistening  in … Continue reading →

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Some things I didn’t know about sand-ripples and the sea

Posted on February 8, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

‘ … the tide holds back from the flat wet sands / That darken from tawny to brown, where little pools / Are stranded like starfish in the rippling ribs’.  Norman Nicholson, The Bow in the Cloud (I am grateful … Continue reading →

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The eagle and the pine-cone: the story of Sarah Losh and Newton Arlosh church

Posted on January 30, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

The newly-restored church of St John the Baptist at Newton Arlosh was consecrated in July 1849: it had previously been a wreck for about 250 years. As John Curwen wrote in 1913 (in a paper that ‘was read on site’), … Continue reading →

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Snippets 7: Why are the best low tides always at the same time of day?

Posted on January 6, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

I’m starting to plan my 2016 guided shore-walks at Allonby Bay and Beckfoot, on the southern shore of the Solway. As a ‘low-tide guide’ (the title bestowed on me by BBC Radio 4’s Open Country) I work through the Silloth … Continue reading →

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Sandstone, ‘smooth as walnut turned on a lathe’

Posted on December 3, 2015 by solwayshorewalker

“Fine sandstone is quite silky, you get a crisp image, the maximum sculptural effect. With sandstone there’s no reflection of light to distort what you see.” Sky Higgins, sculptor. “Red St Bees’ is a fine-grained stone, dull red in colour… … Continue reading →

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What price the Solway’s undersea coal?

Posted on November 5, 2015 by solwayshorewalker

The last coalmine under the Solway Firth, Haig Pit at Whitehaven, was closed in 1986. A note in the Haig Mining Museum states that hundreds of millions of tons of coal remain, up to 10 miles offshore and for two … Continue reading →

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