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Category Archives: sea-bed & undersea
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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Snippet 14: Long-lost piddocks and the peat
The shore at Beckfoot, on a sunny, windy day in May: the Solway is a churned, pale brown, and a wavering white line far off in the Firth marks where the incoming tide is beating against a sandbank. Towards the … Continue reading
Posted in mud-shrimps, peat, bogs and moors, sea-bed & undersea, Snippets, submerged forest
Tagged molluscs, piddocks
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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, peat, bogs and moors, sea-bed & undersea, submerged forest
Tagged peat, piddocks, submerged forest
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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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Snippets 9: ‘Seeing’ the Solway’s bottom
“Between Solway Buoy and Corner Buoy, it’s a critical region, the region that gives us the most trouble. At Corner Buoy there’s a narrow corridor – that channel is our window [to Silloth], to the East of it are big … Continue reading
Posted in ports, sea-bed & undersea, Snippets
Tagged Associated British Ports, bathymetry, multibeam sonar, Silloth
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Piloting a ship up the Firth to Silloth
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
Posted in ports, sea-bed & undersea, ships
Tagged buoys, cargo vessels, ship's pilots, ships, Silloth, Solway
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Freshwater mussels in the West Cumbrian coalfield
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
Posted in coal, fossils, industrial heritage, sea-bed & undersea, shells
Tagged Anthracomya, Carbonicola, freshwater mussels, musselbeds
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Some things I didn’t know about sand-ripples and the sea
‘ … 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
Posted in architecture, sand, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged Allonby Bay, Bagnold, sand-ripples, sand-waves, sandbanks, sandstone
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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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The design of the Solway: Hems, reestings, holes and shoals
The turning tide takes time to fill the Solway. Today (August 12th) the first low tide at Maryport was at 0544h, height 1.5m; after turning, the flood tide was at its highest at Maryport at 1102h, height 7.5m. Heading North … Continue reading
Posted in crossings & waths, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged crossing, currents, haaf-netting, rivers, sandbanks, wath
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Solway Shore-walker 