Category Archives: Snippets

Snippet 16: A beautiful ‘flower’ on the Allonby shore

Posted on May 30, 2025 by solwayshorewalker

Tubularia: its delicate tentacles wafting in the current, its stalks swaying gently, its body glowing crimson-red despite the sediment-laden tide. It’s not a plant, it’s not a sea-weed: it’s an animal which is related to sea-anemones and jellyfish, and a … Continue reading →

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Snippet 15: The continuing mystery of the piddocks

Posted on October 17, 2021 by solwayshorewalker

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 →

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Snippet 14: Long-lost piddocks and the peat

Posted on May 16, 2021 by solwayshorewalker

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 →

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Snippets 13: “A hare in a fix”

Posted on June 16, 2017 by solwayshorewalker

The polar bear on the ice-floe is the iconic image of climate change and the warming of our seas. Here on the Solway Firth nearly 140 years ago, the climate had changed in the other direction – towards a bitter … Continue reading →

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Snippets 12: In praise of Bowness Moss

Posted on March 27, 2017 by solwayshorewalker

Bowness Moss or Common is one of the South Solway Mosses National Nature Reserves, NNR. The near-pristine centre of this raised mire is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, SSSI;  it’s also a Special Area of Conservation, SAC. Acronyms are … Continue reading →

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Snippets 11: big moon, big tides, at Allonby Bay

Posted on October 19, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

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 →

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Snippets 10: stone stoops

Posted on August 19, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

Gateposts don’t normally attract our attention, so it is easy to miss the fact that many of the ‘posts’ supporting field gates on the Solway Plain are not posts at all, but are the traditional red sandstone pillars – known … Continue reading →

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Snippets 9: ‘Seeing’ the Solway’s bottom

Posted on May 11, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

“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 →

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Snippets 8: A non-conformist on the shore

Posted on April 18, 2016 by solwayshorewalker

‘Brockram’ and ‘breccia’: the first word suggests something that is solid and long-lasting, the other has a hint of transience, of frippery. But Brockram is a form of breccia; it looks like a congealed and lumpy mess of porridge that … Continue reading →

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Snippets 6: ” ‘Tis the voice of the lobster’ I heard him declare…”

Posted on October 21, 2015 by solwayshorewalker

Cumbria isn’t just about the National Park and Herdwick sheep, but even on the Solway coast, it sometimes helps to have ‘Lake District’ in your title. The Lake District Coast Aquarium at Maryport is a little gem of an aquarium … Continue reading →

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