Tag Archives: Morecambe Bay

Riddle of the sands

Humphrey Head

How does something too small become a fell? When it’s a place of extinctions and exotic new colonists? When the curative powers of its holy waters have been celebrated alike by Roman lead miners and modern celebrities? When it has one foot on land and the other in the sea? When its charms outweigh its diminutive height to the degree that Wainwright felt duty bound to honour it as one? When it’s the outstretched finger of the Cartmel Peninsula, jutting out into the perilous mudflats of Morecambe Bay? Tim and I cross a salt marsh to explore the beguiling mysteries of Humphrey Head—historic home of England’s last wolf.

Twenty years ago, I joined the RSPB in a remote hide in the middle of Riggindale. It was an easy sell. I’d just seen a golden eagle perched on the crags of Riggindale Edge (the slender spine that Wainwright calls the “connoisseur’s route” up High Street). His mate (the eagle’s, not Wainwright’s) circled above Kidsty Pike. When I looked up from the telescope, the steward proffered a pen and the membership form, and I signed without hesitation.

The eagles were the only nesting pair in England. Sadly, the female died a few years later. The male hung on until late in 2015, but has not been spotted since, and the RSPB has now taken down the hide. Fortunately, some of the Society’s flagship work has had happier outcomes. The organisation started life with a campaign to protect another bird, the little egret. During the 19th century, egret feathers, alongside bird of paradise feathers, had become the must-have costume accessory among the Absolutely Fabulous, Vogue-reading fashionistas of the day. Indeed, the feathers became so sought-after that they were worth more than their weight in gold (literally). The social standing of contemporary Edinas and Patsys rose in inverse proportion to life-expectancy of the young chicks, and in 1889, Emily Williamson formed the Society for the Protection of Birds (later the Royal Society…) to campaign against this barbaric trade.

Today, the RSPB website describes the little egret as “a small white heron with attractive white plumes on crest, back and chest, black legs and bill and yellow feet”. Back when I joined, a little egret sighting would have been almost as rare as a golden eagle sighting. The birds first appeared on these shores in significant numbers in 1989 and didn’t breed here until seven years later. Over the intervening years, numbers have grown to the point where they are now quite at home in our coastal areas. Indeed, one has just taken off from the salt marsh in front of us: a flurry of white beating wings and an elegant, aerodynamic profile, rocketing skyward. Tim and I watch in wonder. Such an encounter may no longer count as uncommon, but it’s still a thrill to behold.

We’re on our way to Humphrey Head, one of Wainwright’s Outlying Fells, despite his emphatic assertion that, “not by any exercise of the imagination can Humphrey Head be classed as an outlying fell of Lakeland. Outlying it certainly is: a limestone promontory thrusting from the Kent Estuary coast and almost surrounded by mudflats at low tide but awash at high. A fell it is certainly not, being a meagre 172 feet above the sea and, away from it’s dangerous cliffs, so gentle in gradient and surface texture that the ascent is a barefoot stroll.”

Humphrey Head
Humphrey Head

Just as you’re scratching your head and wondering whether Wainwright has taken a bump to his, he explains that nevertheless, “it’s isolation, far-ranging views and seascapes, bird life (of national repute), rocky reefs and interesting approach combine to make the place unique in the district, giving better reason for its inclusion in this book than its omission.”

That recent colonists like the little egret have made a new home here feels like poetic justice when you consider that Humphrey Head is traditionally associated with a final act of extinction: it’s the spot where the last wolf in England was slain.

In her book, Tales of Old Lancashire, Elizabeth Ashworth tells a romanticised version of the story…

So determined was Sir Edgar Harrington to rid the Cartmel area of this ferocious beast, he offered his niece’s hand in marriage to the man who could slay the wolf. His niece, Adela, held a candle for Sir Edgar’s son, John, and the feelings were reciprocated, but Sir Edgar disapproved of the match. Besides, John was abroad fighting a foreign foe, and had been gone so long, that even Adela had given him up for dead.

Despite her lack of egret feathers, Adela’s beauty was such that many young men vied for her attentions, and wolf hunt was organised to determine who should wed her.

Her most ardent admirer was a local knight called Laybourne, but on the eve of the event, a mysterious stranger appeared on the Cartmel peninsula, riding a fine Arab stallion. The next day, the hunt raged long and hard, and one by one the competitors dropped out except for Laybourne and the stranger, who rode neck and neck. Eventually, they chased the wolf to Humphrey Head, where Laybourne’s horse pulled up at a vast chasm and refused to jump. The stranger’s horse was braver but failed to clear the distance and plunged to its death. The stranger, himself, managed to cling to the crag’s edge and pull himself to safety on Humphrey Head summit. Here, he confronted the wolf on foot and dispatched it with his sword.

When the stranger claimed Adela as his bride, he revealed himself to be none other than Sir Edgar’s missing son, John, and the couple enjoyed a long and happy marriage.

John Harrington is buried in Cartmel Priory. The church’s weather vane is a wolf, but as Ashworth astutely observes, the grave names his wife as Joan, not Adela.

For me, there is another troubling inconsistency in the story. I will admit to being adept in the art of the “man look”. I frequently spend long minutes looking for what is right under my nose, before giving it up as irretrievably lost. However, I’ve been to Humphrey Head before, and if the way to the summit lay over a gaping chasm, too wide for an Arab stallion, I’m sure even I would have noticed. Besides, how did the wolf get across?

The slightly more prosaic version of the story says the wolf was killed by angry villagers, armed with pikes, after the animal attacked a child in the woods.

As Wainwright recommends, we set off from Kent’s Bank Station. Wooden boards permit pedestrians to cross the tracks, and a little white gate leads out on to a concrete parapet that runs parallel to the line. Wainwright’s descriptions of the shenanigans needed to shin the wall and avoid the eye of the station master are no longer required, it seems. The parapet tracks the line for about a third of a mile and stops before the rocky outcrop of Kirkhead End. Here the path drops on to the mudflats and weaves between the rocks. And it’s here we pause to watch the egret.

Kent's Bank Station
Kent’s Bank Station

The Bay fascinates me. Locals call it the watery desert, and it’s an apt description. At low tide, the sands run as far as the eye can see in a beguiling pattern of spiral shapes, carved by wind and water, glittering with the mesmeric shimmer of orphaned puddles and pools. A place of barren beauty and hidden hazards: quicksands proliferate and the tide returns so fast it can outrun a horse.

Humphrey Head Point is the outstretched index finger of the Cartmel Peninsula, and on this side, we look across the Kent Estuary to Arnside Knott. Together with its neighbours, Hampsfell and Whitbarrow Scar, Humphrey Head would once have been part of one long limestone reef, forged over millions of years when this whole area lay below a shallow sea. These vestigial outcrops may lack the lofty drama of Lakeland’s mountains, but they have character aplenty.

Arnside Knott
Arnside Knott

We follow the path through the verdant grass of the salt marsh, leaping streams and scouting for stepping stones in the soggiest sections. By Wyke House farm we turn a corner and join a section of the Cumbrian Coastal Way heading for the foot of Humphrey Head’s gentler wooded eastern side. Just before the Outdoor Centre, we turn right through a kissing gate and fight our way up a narrow footpath, overrun with brambles and nettles, their extravagant growth nurtured by the same warm spring sunshine that has cruelly encouraged us to wear shorts.

Humphrey Head summit
Humphrey Head summit

We join a country lane that leads to the beach, then turn up towards the Outdoor Centre. From here, a path climbs gently beside a fence above the cliffs to the headland’s summit. Stunted hawthorn trees line the route, their trunks bent from years of relentless subservience to the wind. Behind us, over gentle rolling pastures, rise the Coniston Fells, the ominous vanguard of the high ground beyond. Before us is the Bay, a vast wilderness of slowly ebbing tidal waters and exposed silvery sands. Humphrey Head’s abrupt western cliff is a ha-ha, the grassy summit plateau looks to run seamlessly into the sea with no hint of the hidden drop; and a gate appears to open on to the waves.

Humphrey Head summit
Humphrey Head summit
Humphrey Head summit
Humphrey Head summit

Across the bay, the Lancashire coastline is interrupted by a large unnatural rectangle. The Heysham nuclear power plant dwarfs its surroundings. To the west, over the Leven estuary an army of thin white wind turbines occupies the sea beyond the Furness peninsula. One goal, two very different game-plans, separated by about ten miles of sea and a vast ocean of ideology.

Humphrey Head Point
Humphrey Head Point

With the tide running out, we were hoping to make a circular walk—returning via the beach—but a channel of water still laps the foot of the cliff. We descend to the rocks of Humphrey Head point. The water here still looks deep—we can’t see the bottom—and there’s no telling how firm the sand below might be. We take off our shoes and resign ourselves to sitting on the rocks and dipping our feet in the sea before heading back over the headland. A black Labrador is bolder and dives in. When I look over at him, I do a double take. He’s not swimming, he’s standing. The water’s barely up to his waist. I tentatively dip a foot in. It finds the bottom, so I slip off the rock and into the water. It comes halfway up my calf, and the sand is firm.

Humphrey Head cliff face
Humphrey Head cliff face

Laughing at our hesitancy, we paddle back beneath the cliff face toward the beach. As the water clears, it reveals the channel to be something of a marine nursery. Tiny crabs scurry beneath the surface, and a baby fluke, no longer than the tip of my finger, attacks a rag worm nearly twice its size.

Tim crab spotting
Tim crab spotting
Dead crab
Dead crab

Mustard coloured algae cover the rocks, and shrubs and wild flowers shoot from crevices in the crags. As we reach dry sand, a man is telling his grandchildren about the cave in the rock behind them, and how you can clamber all the way through. The boy and girl’s faces light up and they tug at their father’s sleeve. They disappear into an opening in the cliff where mineral strata form eye-catching stripes. Excited shouts and laughter echo from within, and in a matter of minutes, they emerge a hundred yards up the beach.

Fairy Chapel entrance
Fairy Chapel entrance

The big kid in me wants to play too, so I climb over boulders to the cave entrance. It’s a narrow passage known as The Fairy Chapel. Daylight permeates in from the other end, but the width tapers before I reach it, and I’m slightly concerned this might turn out to be a case of Fat Man’s Agony. Would Mountain Rescue come out if I end up wedged firm between the walls? Or would they quote Wainwright at me, “we’re MOUNTAIN RESCUE and ‘not by any exercise of the imagination can Humphrey Head be classed as an outlying fell’”? Fortunately, I prove more svelte than I feared and emerge into the open, where the young lad is demanding of his dad, “AGAIN”.

The Fairy Chapel
The Fairy Chapel

Somewhere here is the site of a holy well. The waters were said to possess healing powers, and lead miners from as far back as Roman times would walk here to drink in the hope that the liquid would flush the toxins from their bodies. In 2003, Phil Lynott (a local landowner, not the late Thin Lizzy frontman) launched Willow, a brand of mineral water bottled from a spring in his nearby field.

Humphrey Head
Humphrey Head

His curiosity was roused when he moved two sick ponies into the paddock and found that each made a remarkable recovery. When Lynott realised that the ponies were drinking from the spring, he had the water analysed and found it contained traces of salicin, a natural anti-inflammatory. Salicin is formed from willow bark and is the natural origin of aspirin. Willow trees were once prevalent, and their remains now form a layer in the earth, through which the water is filtered. Lynott was convinced the water helped him recovery from cancer, and celebrity chef, Clarissa Dickson-Wright, claimed, live on television, that it had cured a benign cyst on her breast and a gungey toe. The company got into trouble with the consumer safety authorities when they went a step further and launched an advertising campaign claiming their product could cure a range of skin complaints such as eczema and psoriasis.

In its heyday, the holy well lay behind a door in the rock. All that remains now is a rusty pipe, but I can’t find it (“man look”, probably).

As the kids lead their dad back to the entrance to the Fairy Chapel, an inscription on a slab of rock catches my eye. It says, “Beware how you on these rocks ascend. Here William Pedder met his end. August 22nd, 1857. Aged 10 years”. It’s a sobering note, like a soulful minor cadence in a feel-good hit of the summer.

We head back past the Outdoor Centre and retrace our steps to Kent’s Bank. From the salt marsh, I cast a goodbye glance at Humphrey Head: a place of endings and beginnings, miracle cures and tragic demises, historic extinctions and exotic new colonists, prettiness and peril; and every bit deserving of the honorary fell status, Wainwright accords it.

Further reading:

The little egret:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/little-egret/#f6IlRMpFi3iUhtw5.99

The last wolf

The holy well:

Willow Water

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/rob_on_the_road/2720253.stm

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/miracle-cure-spring-water-to-face-food-safety-investigation-46791.html


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    This Is The Sea

    Morecambe Bay, Hampsfell and Cartmel

    Morecambe Bay is place of desolate beauty and treacherous tides. Its rich cockle and shrimp beds provide a living for local fishermen but have proved lethal for some.  One of finest views of the Bay is from Hampsfell, a hill bedecked with rare limestone pavements.  Below Hampsfell lies Cartmel, a medieval village still illuminated by its inspiring history.

    Muddy bronze sands stretch all the way out to the sky, snaked with silver rivulets of residual water, stranded when the tide beat its retreat; the horizon a distant band of yellow in an otherwise monochrome landscape. Above, leaden clouds are fringed with pink and pierced with shafts of golden light, spearing the earth like the fingers of God in a William Blake painting.

    Morecambe Bay
    Morecambe Bay

    Morecambe Bay
    Morecambe Bay- photo by Leonard Osborne

    For all its wilderness, there is industry here. A tractor rides a sandbank pulling a trailer on 200ft of rope through a channel of water. The trailer drags two large funnel nets to scoop shrimps from the shallows. These will be riddled (sieved) to remove the crabs and flukes (flounder). They will be shelled, cooked and potted in a spicy butter before being shipped to the far flung deli counters of London or the hotels of Hong Kong. Swap a horse for the tractor and this scene has changed little in a hundred years.

    But the stark beauty of Morecambe Bay hides perilous hazards. Its tides sweep in twice a day, faster than a horse can gallop and with a force that can roll a tractor one and a half miles up the shore. When they retreat, they leave a lethal maze of ever-shifting quicksands. Inevitably, the bay has claimed its share of victims.

    Indeed, in 1853 Grange-Over-Sands was nearly robbed of its first vicar. Historically, the sands provided a convenient shortcut linking the two parts of Lancashire (Lancashire North O’ The Sands is now part of Cumbria). The Reverend Rigg was en route from Manchester to take up his post when his coach was swallowed by the unstable ground. A delicate soul, Rigg had steeled himself for the journey by shutting the windows and shrouding himself in so many blankets he was utterly oblivious to the fact his carriage was sinking. It was with some effort that the coachman eventually got him out through the window, as the doors were already too submerged to open.

    Many others were less fortunate; in fact so alarming was the death toll that in 1501 the monks at Cartmel Priory appointed an official guide. That responsibility now rests with the Crown and the current Queen’s Guide to the Sands took up the post in 1963. A Bay fisherman since his teens, Cedric Robinson reads these sands like a book and has been instrumental in developing the Cross Bay walks that attract many thousands each year and raise princely sums for charity.

    Cross Bay Walk
    Cross Bay Walk

    Before each walk, Cedric marks a safe route with laurel twigs. At the appointed hour, he leads the assembled party out across the watery desert. It is a strange and exhilarating experience, light dancing off scattered pools; the exposed sea-bed running as far as the eye can see – so flat that a solitary laurel branch can look like a tree (until a dog invariably runs ahead to pee against it).

    Cross Bay Walk
    Cross Bay Walk

    It would be wrong to imagine the bay benign however, its fatalities somehow confined to former centuries. The band of volunteers who staff Bay Search and Rescue are kept busy and their amphibious Haaglund all-terrain vehicle is regularly deployed. But in 2004, a tragedy occurred that neither guide nor rescue service could avert.

    An abundance of cockles in Morecambe Bay coincided with a dearth elsewhere and their value rocketed. Soon the area saw a large influx of migrant workers, deployed by unscrupulous gang masters with scant regard for their charges’ safety. In his book, Between the Tides, Cedric recalls how ill equipped these parties were: knowledge of the tide tables seemed to consist of watching the local fisherman; some had little or no transport and were forced to walk the six or seven miles to the cockle beds.

    It was an accident waiting to happen and tragically, on Feb 5th 2004, it did. A party of Chinese cocklers was cut off by the tide and twenty three drowned before the rescue boats and helicopters could reach them. Only Li Hua survived because he got so cold he left early and was picked up by a lifeboat on a sand bar after a brave but futile attempt to swim back to save his friends.

    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

    The incident had lasting ramifications, triggering changes in law and the creation of a Gang Masters Licensing Authority. Li’s evidence helped convict gang master Lin Liang Ren of manslaughter, but a wider picture of organised crime, human trafficking and enslavement of the desperately poor emerged. Li Hua now lives under the witness protection scheme.

    The cockle beds were eventually closed and remained so until last year when limited access was granted on a strict permit-controlled basis.

    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

    A Nick Bloomfield film, Ghosts, upset the local fishing fraternity by portraying them as racists whose bullying forced the Chinese to work at night, an accusation vehemently denied by the fishermen who insist no such confrontation ever took place. Indeed, on the night of Feb 5th, locals tried to warn the cocklers of the impending tide and some even risked their own lives to assist in the rescue efforts.

    Such a tragedy casts a long shadow and thirteen years on I am loathe to dwell on it, but that the story is so well known, its omission would seem oddly remiss.

    For all their inherent danger, the sands possess a desolate beauty and while I have followed Cedric across these flats on more than one occasion, my favourite way to view the bay is from the top of Hampsfell.

    Hampsfell
    Hampsfell

    From High Newton, I take the road past the post box, up the hill and over the road bridge. Here I turn left and then right, following the Cartmel signs, to descend Head House Hill.

    A little way past the farm, a bridleway leads off to the left, becoming an intermittent tree-lined avenue dissecting pastures full of grazing sheep and curious cows. The path crosses a road and continues through a gate on the other side. After about quarter of a mile, a footpath sign points the way left into a meadow and the gentle climb begins, quickly affording impressive views of the Coniston fells.

    At the top of the field, the path follows the line of the trees into the lightly wooded Hampsfield Allotment, then climbs on to open fell. A little further up, through a gate in a dry stone wall, the magnificent limestone pavements that adorn the summit come into view, jutting defiantly out of the hillside like ancient fortifications.

    Limestone Pavements on Hampsfell
    Limestone Pavements on Hampsfell

    Formed under the sea some 350 million years ago from the remains of millions of small shelled creatures, the large upstanding blocks are known as clints and were scoured by glaciers during the ice ages, leaving them riven with gutter-like channels called runnels. These pavements harbour rare species of butterfly and moth and are a haven for badgers, stoats, weasels and even polecats. Only 26km2 of limestone pavement exists in the U.K. and in 1981, Hampsfell’s striking examples became the first in the country to be protected by a Limestone Pavement order under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

    As I reach the top, the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay stretches out before me. The tide is out and sand ridges spiral into elaborate patterns. The newly risen sun is starting to break through the cloud, turning patches of sky an ethereal yellow and gilding stranded pools beneath. Elsewhere clouds cast blue tinged shadows turning sky and sand into mirror images, blending into one continuous other-worldly landscape.

    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell
    Morecambe Bay from Hampsfell

    It’s hard to imagine a finer backdrop for an exotic limestone paved hill top; but Hampsfield Fell has further riches. At the summit lies the Hospice, a squat stone tower with an open door and an oft used fireplace; built in 1834 by Thomas Remington, vicar of Cartmel as a gift to weary wanderers and a testament of thanks for the beauty he encountered here on a daily basis. Inside are boards inscribed with verses bidding travellers welcome and eulogising the landscape; and one rather more pithy plea against vandalism with a delicious quote from Solomon: “though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle yet will not his foolishness depart him”.

    Outside, steep stone steps lead to the roof where a viewfinder helps interpret the uninhibited 360 degree panorama. Swing north-west from the bay, across the lush green of Cartmel valley, and you encounter a fine parade of mountains: the Coniston Fells, the Langdale Pikes, Helvellyn, the Fairfield group, the Kentmere Pikes, the Howgills and finally, before you meet the shore again, the distinctive profile of Yorkshire’s Ingleborough. At a little over 700ft, Hampsfell is small-fry compared with such lofty neighbours, but its views punch far above its height.

    Hampsfell and Coniston Fells
    Hampsfell and Coniston Fells

    I continue south over grass paths to the subsidiary summit of Fell End, marked with a large cairn, then descend past Grange Fell Golf Club to Grange Fell Road. Here I turn right then right again on to Haggs Lane to follow the hill down into Cartmel.

    Hamspfell sheep with the Bay behind
    Hamspfell sheep with the Bay behind

    Chris Evans described Cartmel as “a thimble full of diamonds”. The Village Shop is a mini Fortnum and Masons, chock full of delectable goodies and famous for its Sticky Toffee Pudding. Unsworth’s Yard is home to a micro-brewery, wine shop, bakers and a very fine cheese emporium. The village boasts no less than four pubs and for the high end gastronome, it is home to Simon Rogan’s l’Enclume, winner of the Good Food Guide’s best restaurant for the last four years.

    Cartmel Village Shop
    Cartmel Village Shop

    In muddy walking boots with a mere pocketful of change, I don’t rate my chances there, but the lovely people at Cartmel Coffee don’t seem to mind me traipsing across their stone floor to buy a coffee and a deliciously sticky chocolate brownie.

    Outside in the square I sit on the steps of the old market cross and look across at the fine medieval arch of the Priory gatehouse. Built in 1190 and colonised by Augustine monks, the Priory lasted four hundred years until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, when several of its brethren were hanged along with the villagers who supported them. Unusually, the church was not razed because its founder, William Marshall, had granted the villagers the right to use it as their parish church and they successfully petitioned to keep it.

    Cartmel Gatehouse, Market Cross and Fish Slabs
    Cartmel Gatehouse, Market Cross and Fish Slabs

    As the second son of a baron, William was not in line to inherit but won fame and fortune through his prowess on the tournament circuit and on the battlefield where he fought beside Richard I. His loyalty to the crown was tested, however, when John assumed the throne. Marshall was one of barons who held the errant king to account and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, the closest thing we have ever had to a constitution enshrining justice and liberty from oppression.

    Cartmel Priory Church
    Cartmel Priory Church

    In September 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, Cartmel hosted a magical Son et Lumière. Projected on to the wall of the Priory church at dusk, the spectacle celebrated William Marshall’s legacy. At the climax of the show, a knight in shining armour galloped into the churchyard on a magnificent black charger; reared up, holding sword aloft, then galloped back into the darkness.

    Under the steel helmet was Tracey Venter of Black Horses Friesians astride her fine Friesian stallion, Droomwalls. Tracey later told me her field of vision was so restricted by the visor she couldn’t see the assembled crowd. She said if she’d realised just how many people had turned out to watch, she might have been a tad nervous (words to that effect anyway).

    Tracey Venter as William Marshall
    Tracey Venter as William Marshall at the day-time pageant, photo by Sandy Kitching

    From the square, I walk out past Cartmel’s intimate racecourse (another diamond) and follow the country lanes to Field Broughton; then back, via Barber Green, to High Newton and The Crown Inn, where a roaring fire and fine selection of local beers await. On offer is William Marshall Crusader Ale from the Cartmel Brewery, but there’s also award winning Loweswater Gold and beautifully balanced Hawkshead Bitter. Oh the agony of choice! Then again, this is my local – I don’t have to drive anywhere. I think I might just see a solution.


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