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Category Archives: tidelines
Neaps and Springs: high highs, low highs, and high or low lows.
During the biggest Spring tides of the year, often in September, the height of the water in the Solway Firth might change by almost 10 metres – that’s nearly 33 feet – during the course of one tidal cycle. And … Continue reading
Posted in Allonby, Marine Conservation Zone, rowing, Sabellaria, honeycomb worm, Spring & Neap Tides, tidelines
Tagged guided walks, sea-level changes, skiff, tideline
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Skeletons: sea-sorted
Gently, the waves carry and deposit their offerings, seeking suitable places to pile them: fine black grains of coal in the hollows between ripples; grey-white tangles of hornwrack, heaped beside a log, the minute animals dead within their skeletal cells; … Continue reading
Posted in Found Objects, tidelines
Tagged bird skeleton, flotsam
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“Look!”
“Look what I’ve found!”“Look at that!”“What’s this?” We do it automatically, hold out the treasure on our hand. For about 10 years I’ve been taking pictures of what people have found when they joined me for low-tide guided walks on … Continue reading
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 3: plastic rubbish and a bathyscope
My new piece of kit as a ‘low-tide guide’ (a delightful title conferred on me recently by BBC Radio4’s Open Country) is a bathyscope; with a bathyscope one can peer beneath the ruffled surface of pools and find out what’s … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, Snippets, tidelines
Tagged bathyscope, marine litter, plastic rubbish
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Hunting for ‘guggies’, and finding ‘canoes’, on the Galloway shore
We went to the Scottish side of the Solway Firth to hunt for a boring mollusc. Or, rather more accurately, for the empty shells of a marine snail, Natica monilifera, known variously as the Necklace Shell, the beaded Nerite, or … Continue reading
Posted in shells, tidelines
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, Luce Bay, Natica, shells, the Mull of Galloway, tideline
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The balance sheet between blue and green
‘A thin blue line’. Of policemen edging a protest march? The blue halo of Earth’s fragile atmosphere as seen from space? No – in this case, a blue line that Robert Alcock painted along a sea-wall in Bilbao in 2011, … Continue reading
Posted in coal, The 'Energy Coast', tidelines
Tagged climate change, coal, sea-level changes, tideline
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Dune walk (with one diversion)
My guided shore-walks are ‘vertical’, from the bottom to the top of the shore – we usually spend a lot of time looking at the animals near the low water mark, with diversions on the way back to see the … Continue reading
Posted in dunes, sand, tidelines
Tagged butterflies, dunes, lugworms, marram, sand, sandmartins, shore-walks, tideline
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Boring molluscs and bevelled edges
Dog-whelks, Nucella lapillus, were clustered on the mid-shore rocks in late April; singles, twos and threes, they were apparently uninterested in the barnacles beneath their feet, but were there to socialise or, more specifically, to meet partners of the opposite … Continue reading
Posted in shells, tidelines
Tagged dog-whelks, Gosse, mussels, Natica, shells, shore-walks, tideline
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What’s an AONB?
“Most people don’t know what an AONB is – but it’s exactly what it says, it’s an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.” The important word is ‘beauty’, of the outstanding and natural type. Graeme Proud is the Ranger/Volunteer Co-ordinator for … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, tidelines
Tagged conservation, hot potatoes, litter-picking, rubbish, strandline, volunteers
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Solway Shore-walker 