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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, bogs and moors, sea-bed & undersea
Tagged piddocks
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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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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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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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Solway Shore-walker 