The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay Find!
Before the advent of the railway, the main route from Lancaster to the Furness Peninsula was across the sands of Morecambe Bay, an area beset by quicksands and ever-changing channels. There is evidence that a guide was appointed in the time of Henry VIII to conduct travellers across the treacherous route but there may have been guides before this time appointed by the Prior of Cartmel. The present guide is Cedric Robinson, a Morecambe Bay fisherman who was appointed Queen's Guide over Kent Sands in 1963. His book 'Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay' tells of his early life in Flookborough, learning as a boy to fish the bay for cockles, shrimps, flukes and whitebait with his father, and of the changes which followed his appointment as Guide and move to Guide's Farm in Grange over Sands. Today his main duties as Guide revolve around sponsored charity walks across the Bay from Arnside to Kents Bank, which take place on several weekends during the summer. Mr Robinson has to survey the walks beforehand, marking a safe route to cross and then accompany several hundred walkers across the sands. He also descibes the difficulties encountered by the survey of the Bay for the proposed Morecambe Bay barrage in 1969, when he advised on the construction of drilling rigs at intervals across the Bay. Of course there is still no barrage.
This book also describes the beauty of the Bay in all weathers and the variety of birds and other wildlife to be seen. It is a pity that probably the most famous event on the Bay is now the tragic deaths of the Chinese cocklers, but this serves to emphasise the dangers of the sands and our good fortune in having the opportunity cross this spectacular area in the safekeeping of the Guide.
24 August 2009 from ChrisS
Finds
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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