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Category Archives: Allonby
Snippet 15: The continuing mystery of the piddocks
The tide is ebbing and, along the inner edge of a shallow channel on the shore, it has deposited a line of offerings, neatly sorted: predominantly mussel shells, some black, some striped, all shining wetly in the October sun; a … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Found Objects, sea-bed & undersea, shells, Snippets, submerged forest
Tagged Pholas, piddocks, Zirfaea
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The saltpans at Crosscanonby
The tides and currents have sorted the sizes and colours of the shingle, and here on the upper shore near Crosscanonby I am walking over shapes that are large – and predominantly red: lumps and discs of the New Red … Continue reading
Posted in aerial views, Allonby, coastal heritage, salt
Tagged Crosscanonby, kinch, saltpans, wooden pipe
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‘Cold cases’: land-scape puzzles on the Solway shore
“Mr Cash went to Beckfoot … the submerged forest was not visible and I regret to say the residents he inquired from had not even heard of it”. So wrote Brian Blake in his 1955 book The Solway Firth, which … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, dunes, peat, bogs and moors, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged piddocks
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The vanishing keel on Ship’s-keel Scaur
Back in 2015 near Dubmill Point on Allonby Bay I finally found what I’d been searching for: the ‘ship’s keel’ for which Ship’s-Keel Scaur is named. Its timbers were as hard as iron, the keel (if that is what it … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, coastal heritage, industrial archaeology, ships
Tagged shifting sand, shipwrecks
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Time-warps and gnomons
It was a fine bright morning, there was still a sprinkling of snow on the fells, but Spring was clearly on its way; I’d spent too much time at my desk writing and longed for the changed perspective of the … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Marine Conservation Zone, tidelines
Tagged coastal walking, volunteers
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Snippets 11: big moon, big tides, at Allonby Bay
On Monday night the full moon, its face very slightly squashed, shone down on a stormy Solway Firth. The brown silt-laden waves pounded ashore and shortly after midnight the incoming tide that was battering the sea-defences at Dubmill Point reached … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Marine Conservation Zone, Sabellaria, honeycomb worm, Snippets, Spring & Neap Tides
Tagged Sabellaria
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Allonby Bay MCZ: a ‘slimy dangerous place?’
Allonby Bay, on Cumbria’s Solway coast, recently became a Marine Conservation Zone; there are now 50 MCZs in English and ‘non-devolved’ waters and proposals for more are under consideration. Most people, probably, neither know nor would they care. Here are … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Marine Conservation Zone, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged Allonby Bay, conservation, Marine Conservation Zone, Solway, undersea
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The design of the Solway: an aerial perspective, part 2
September 2nd, 0845h: Andrew Lysser, pilot, aerial photographer, instructor, and owner of Cumbria Gyroplanes, and I lifted off from the runway at Carlisle airport in a silver-coloured gyroplane. This time I wasn’t nervous, and there was no wall of rain … Continue reading
Posted in aerial views, Allonby, ports, sand, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged aerial views, gyroplane, megaripples, ripples, River Eden, Romans, Sabellaria, salt-pans, sandbanks, ships, Silloth, Solway
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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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Solway Shore-walker 