Memories of aurochs and oaks: the re-emergence of the submerged forest

“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 is illustrated by black-and-white photographs taken by J. Allen Cash. Fortunately, Mr Blake himself did find the forest later, and was “delighted with [his] luck” when he walked South along the Cumberland coast from Silloth.

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  Forest and peat 2010

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  Peat, tree-trunks and dunes 2010

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  Peat overlying clay 2010

I first went to look for the forest back in 2004, and found the stumps and roots of the ancient trees on the shore near Beckfoot; I continued to find them in roughly the same area for the next 10-12 years, and they became part of the ‘itinerary’ of my guided low-tide shorewalks. It was not just the trees that made this forest area special. As I wrote elsewhere back in 2004:

“the patches of black are like shadows along the sharp edges of channels in the sand. Walk down towards them, and the shadows resolve themselves into banks of peat. Poke them with your toe and feel how dense and sodden they are, smoothed by the friction of waves and sand. Walk on them and feel their sponginess. And gradually you will become aware that the dark organic mass is not only peat, but supports here a horizontal tree-trunk, or there a stump that radiates roots. Wander around and you will find trunks and branches, single and entangled, embedded in the peat and sand; and erect stumps, 20-30 cms high, their tops flattened as though cut by a chainsaw. The wood is still fibrous, soft and dark; you can crumble it and tease it apart, as though it were any rotting log in a woodland. But the difference is that this woodland thrived about 8000 years ago.”

Then, a few years ago during a sequence of winter storms, the peat was thrashed and fragmented by the waves, the wet and fragile wood vanished, and nothing remained visible of the woodland and grassy plain that had once covered part of the modern bed of the Solway Firth.

Shingle, sand-waves and a distant rocky scaur

Yet that patch had been just a small area: underneath the new and ever-changing profile of the mid-shore near Beckfoot, where shingle was swept away, rocky scaurs – relics of glacial deposits – were exposed, and sand was piled in sessile waves and tiny ripples, the time-horizon containing the forest and peat and clay would still exist. It was a comfort to know that this evidence of the formation and changing development of the turbulent Solway Firth was still there – but hidden, from sight and perhaps from memory.

So this month, after weeks of strong north-westerly winds and storm surges and Spring tides, I went down to Beckfoot again – wondering, hoping, that the secret of the submerged trees might once more have been revealed. The shore looked so different from back in the autumn that I was failing to find my usual ‘markers. The cloud was low and the air was grey, and across the Firth Scotland had (very sensibly) taken leave of the Union and was no longer to be seen. A mixed flock of gulls sat and preened near the water, keeping a silent watch on my movements, and I apologised as thirty or more oystercatchers failed to hold their nerve and rose up in a flock, trilling with indignation.

I zig-zagged between the tidelines, hoping to find ‘treasures’ like goose barnacles attached to flotsam, but the long mounds of tangled wrack and twigs were too tightly woven together by the waves. Dark shapes ahead were merely small boulders and rounded pebbles of a newly-exposed scaur.

Looking up to watch a curlew come gliding over the dunes, its outspread wings motionless as it let itself be carried on the wind towards its friends by the distant water, I suddenly saw that, higher up the shore towards the battered dune faces, there were smooth dark plates of – something.

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  Plates of clay 2020

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  Tree stumps in the clay

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  Tree stumps and clay

They were not peat, as I had expected when I went to look, but sheets of heart-stoppingly slippery, grey clay: the same type of clay that had lain beneath the peat layer that had preserved the forest. Its surface was speckled with embedded fragments of wood – and over there, there was a tree-stump with radiating roots; some fallen branches or perhaps more roots, half-buried in the clay. And more stumps, sticking up defiantly.

Had the peat been broken up and washed away, or was this one of those places where salt- or fresh-water had temporarily inundated the peat bog? Perhaps there had been a meeting of sea and river water, where the suspended sediment had flocculated and fallen – or perhaps the sea had broken through a barrier and washed out clay that had been deposited at the bottom of a still, small lake? For we know that the margins of the post-glacial Firth were always changing, as sea-level varied relative to the land. Finally the trees had died, their roots waterlogged as by a beaver-dam, their bodies gradually preserved as the sphagnum mosses grew ever upwards and compressed into layers of acidic, anaerobic peat.

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  Burrow entrances

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  Burrows in the clay

There was another puzzle too, for the surface of the clay was pock-marked with tiny holes, the entrances to burrows. I broke off a piece and found the burrows had been filled in with yellowish sand. What creatures had lived in this clay, and when? I had previously found peat that was riddled with the burrows of piddocks, bivalved molluscs that usually bored their homes in rock, which showed that the peat must have been exposed to the sea before it was buried, and later un-buried, by the sand. But these burrows were smaller and regularly spaced, and clay is a firm, dense substance that would not be easily penetrated…

Here were the lost stories of the inhabitants of land and water – aurochs and oaks, bog-plants and bivalves. Here on the Solway’s malleable edges, focus always switches between the geological past and the passing of a few tidal cycles; between the landscape-scale of scattered woodland to the microscopic archive of peat and clay.

A Solway small-holding

Yesterday I stood leaning on the pitchfork by the glowing ash-pile, just looking around at the trees and the hedges and our sheep. Two weeks ago, on a blue, still morning, there had been a sound like a gun-shot from our wood and the rooks all leapt into the air, shrieking and shouting. My husband went out to remonstrate with (presumably) someone who was shooting into the rookery – and found an enormous branch had cracked off from one of the Scots pines. Luckily no human or other creature was hurt, although some of the smaller trees had been hit. Hence the bonfire out in the field, to burn the brash (the sap-sticky logs have already been sawn and split, and will dry out for at least a year before being used on the wood-burner.)

We run a small-holding of about 2 hectares, in NW Cumbria and looking across to the Solway Firth: woodland, hedges, vegetable and flower garden, pasture for the 6 Hebridean sheep, and a beck which rises from a spring just outside our land and runs through the pond that we created. Our small wood is at least 160 years old, presumably having been planted at the time our Victorian house was built, and has a mixture of native and non-native trees, including a very tall and increasingly straggly redwood, its trunk pitted with woodpeckered holes (where, my birder brother-in-law assures me, wrens might huddle together in the winter).

The previous owner (and the original Victorian owners – they had carriages not cars) kept horses, and the pasture-land had become rank and full of docks; a narrow strip alongside the wood was damp and dull.

After we moved in eighteen years ago we, and two kind and energetic friends, planted many more native trees – including alders, hornbeam, willow, birch, oak, Scots pine, guelder rose, hazel – singly and as a copse, and thickets of hawthorn, blackthorn and wild rose, in an attempt to make the local woodland and garden birds feel more at home, and migrant warblers and other birds to stay.

Some years later chiffchaffs came, and a pair of blackcaps; there are 2 pairs of breeding nuthatches now, a tree-creeper, and Great-spotted woodpeckers, amongst others. We also planted a windbreak in the field, of suckers from the wild cherries, and a mix of other trees and shrubby bushes – all fenced to keep out the sheep, who always enjoy a bit of novelty in their diet.

But a couple of years ago, there was a threat that a limestone quarry might open at the top of the hill behind the house, creating dust and noise and destroying some old woodland in the process; United Utilities had started mutilating West Cumbria in the construction of a new water pipleine for West Cumbria (hundreds of tonnes of concrete are being poured into a new reservoir on the other side of the hill as I write) – and my despair at the effect that this would be having on the wildlife surrounding our village kept growing.

So, last year, we sold 4 of our 10 sheep – the Herdwick ewes, since they were in good condition for breeding – and  planted up a third of a hectare of pasture with native trees. But it was the year of the Beast from the East, which was followed not long after by – unheard of for this area! – six weeks of drought. I don’t like tubular tree-guards, and we’ll remove them when each tree is sufficiently tall and robust to look after itself, but the tubes ensured a warmer, damper micro-climate around each sapling. By scooping water from the dribbling slimy beck with a bowl and into buckets, we managed to keep the trees wet enough in the drought so that we only lost about 8 percent. The survivors are already looking good this Spring, and we recently – with the ‘help’ of our grand-children – planted hawthorn slips to make a hedge along one side.

We’ve learnt a lot about managing woodland during our time here: when to trim branches so that light can reach the smaller species or the wild violets and cowslips; when and what to plant. We pollarded a big old ash by the pond, partly because it had a crack between two branches, but also because it was throwing so much shade that there was no chance that dragonflies would stay.

I managed to persuade my husband that the grass in the wooded areas doesn’t need to be cut like a lawn! At the moment the floor of the old wood is a white froth of cow-parsley, mixed with the deep purple of self-seeded Honesty and a jumble of pink- and white- and blue-bells, all of which are now the ‘Spanish’ type (although I’m sure they were ‘English’ when we first moved in). This has been a good year for celandine and dandelions – and also for cuckoo-pint, whose pale sheaths and glossy leaves have proliferated in every shady patch. Earlier, there was a carpet of snowdrops, followed by daffs – both species seem to proliferate naturally as well as with some help from us (splitting and re-planting clumps when they’re ‘in the green’).

The newest woodland was planted on a pasture which has for decades been fertilised by horse- then sheep-droppings, and kept well-grazed. A range of grasses grew up last year amongst the saplings, plus chickweed, creeping and meadow buttercup, and some milkweed. We had to cut the grass at the end of the summer and remove the cuttings – this was during the hot dry weather when the flies swarmed and I spent the time whining, raking and sweating – but already this year we’re seeing many more milkweed growing and I’m hoping the grey furry-leaved mulleins and foxgloves that I retrieved from inappropriate places elsewhere (the gravel path, the veg garden) will flourish in their new sites.

The pond has evolved with time. When you think of the Lake District you think of volcanic rocks and slate, but that massif is fringed with limestone – and our village sits at the base of a low plateau, where the rain gathers in sink-holes and flows into aquifers, eventually emerging as springs where the limestone meets the harder rock. Our beck is surprisingly ‘flashy’ during heavy rain in winter – very soon the percolating water explodes out of the ground and flushes silt from the field behind us into the pond; then still rising, spreads out onto the mini-floodplain of our field, before finding its way back into the water-course again.  The volume and speed of the water that comes down is spectacular.

But that hasn’t happened this winter, and there has been very little heavy rain for weeks. Last week shingle banks were showing in the River Derwent in both Cockermouth and Keswick (seeing the water so low, it’s hard to believe how high the river rose during the floods of 2009 and 2017, over-topping the defences) and already our pond is so low that it is fringed with mudbanks, and much of the weed is no longer floating but resting, humped, upon the mud. I don’t know how the tadpoles and caddis-fly larvae, the whirligig beetles and various snails are faring – they are scarcely to be seen, presumably finding refuge amongst the water-forget-me-not and watercress and mint; even the base of the reed-bed looks dry and the reeds themselves are not growing as fast as usual for this time of year.

Perhaps there are no longer tadpoles anyway; for several mornings it was apparent that something had been rooting in the water-forget-me-not, patches of which were left floating, roots pointing to the sky. Our trail-camera picked up a male mallard arriving in the dark and leaving at dawn: mystery solved (but see note below, three weeks later). One year a female mallard made her nest on the small island in the pond but it wasn’t a wise move to nest within site of a wood that is so aurally and visibly beloved of corvids – there are about 40 rook and several jackdaw nests, and there is a crows’ nest at the top of the field – and of course the constantly vigilant magpies patrol the hedgerows. The duck eggs didn’t last long.

Last year the introduction of more light to the pond paid off, because it was finally visited by a large yellow-and-black hawker dragonfly and several red-bodied damselflies. But there’s not a chance that they’ll come to stay this year unless the water level rises – and now, in this period of lush growth, the vegetation upstream on the plateau will soak up any rain that falls.

As I stood beside the ashes of the bonfire, which occasional flurries of wind sparked into life, I was trying to remember all the birds and animals that have visited since we have been living here, and I hope that what we have been doing – in the wood, the pond, the fields and hedges and the garden itself – has helped to make them feel welcome and at home. Hedgehogs have bred; an otter visited when the frogs were mating (betrayed only by its pawmarks); bank voles burrow everywhere and a red squirrel visited (but we must have been found wanting because it left after three days). There are pipistrelles, on whom I eaves-drop with the bat-detector, and frogs and toads.

As for birds: 3 species of tit live here and long-tailed tits visit; chaffinches, greenfinches (fewer these days), goldfinches, and recently a pair of bullfinches; the usuals like robins, (lots of) blackbirds; dunnocks; goldcrested wrens and (never-ordinary) wrens; a pair of song-thrushes, and a pair of mistles; the tree-creeper(s), nuthatches, house- and tree-sparrows; the corvids; the Great-Spot… A sparrowhawk hunts frequently through the garden, sometimes sitting on the sandstone gatepost by the kitchen window, glaring around with glittering yellow eyes; a collared dove provides the occasional good meal, but the wood-pigeons are too heavy for him to take on. Last year a buzzard learnt to snatch rooklings from their nests and, dropping down through the trees, tore at their flesh and feathers on the floor of the wood. In the cold spells, siskins and bramblings cluster round the feeders.

And then there is the song of the chiffchaff and the blackcap, and the twittering of the swallows and house-martins, the night- and dawn-calling of the tawny owls …

Except there isn’t. This year, as last, a chiffchaff returned and made me briefly, almost deliriously happy; but he left despite my daily exhortations to stay – presumably no mate came to keep him company. The barn owl hasn’t been seen for at least two years; the work on the water-pipeline seems to have scared the hares away; the local tawnies haven’t been heard for at least 8 months; only 4 swallows have (finally – 3 weeks late) returned, of which only one pair is probably ‘ours’ and will nest in the hayloft; so far I have seen only one house-martin. The heron that used to visit hasn’t been seen since last summer. The hedgehogs began to shuffle around in day-time last year, and were later found dead – a sure sign they had succumbed to some infection. Spotted fly-catchers nested in the Clematis montana for a few years when we first arrived, but they didn’t return one summer and I have never seen one again.

It is so easy to become upset and depressed at what we have lost and are losing, and some days it is very hard to be positive, especially in the face of such global losses and anthropocene-induced extinctions. But then I make myself stop and watch and listen, and make a tally of what we do have; think what we – perhaps – have managed to accomplish, in looking after our ‘neighbours’ and making them feel that our land is, actually, theirs too. And I have to hold on to those thoughts, and rejoice in the sound of even that single pair of swallows, chattering to each other excitedly as they swoop around the barn and yard, as they come back home for the summer.

Update, May 29th 2019.

Success!

Yesterday a female mallard and nine ducklings swam and scuttled down what remains of the beck. That male mallard flying in after dark must have been coming ‘home’ to visit her – somewhere near the pond she had, after all, had a nest. What a brave little female – and what a triumph to have kept that nest and eggs so well hidden.

Tidal Power proposals on the Solway: an update

Out on the Firth

When I first blogged about this topic, back in October 2015, I explained why the Solway Firth is being considered as a suitable estuary for the construction of tidal power schemes, and the basic ideas and technology behind the schemes. Please do read that post first, if you have time, as the background of the companies – and the people involved – also provide good stories.

This post is a short, factual update – two of the original players have (probably) departed, and one (or two?) new players have entered the pool. The B-word has, of course, played havoc with decision-making, and as a result, with financial backing.

Barrages and weirs

1. North-West Energy Squared.

A system of barrages (sorry – ‘gateways’) across estuaries in the NW of England, including across the Solway Firth from Workington to Kirkcudbright; read the earlier blogpost for details of the plan, and the CEO’s comments.

NWE2’s uninformative website no longer exists, though the company is still listed and took on 2 new directors in September 2018.

Note: ‘barrage’ is now a dirty word in the context of estuarine power generation – it’s considered an outdated and disruptive technology, very expensive to construct, with too many problems relating to environmental changes and remediation.

 2. Solway Energy Gateway

The idea of an ‘electric bridge’, proposed by Nigel Catterson, across the Firth between Bowness and Annan, along what has been called a ‘brownfield site’ (Arup) – the line of former Solway viaduct.

This would be a ‘weir’, fixed to the sea-bed and with 6m vanes which can be raised or lowered, creating a difference in head (see my earlier post for an explanation); the vanes could be dropped flat at slack tide. Power would be generated via Venturi turbines .

SEG also plans also to construct a foot- and/or cycle-bridge across the Firth – this idea has met with considerable enthusiasm in public consultations on the Scottish side. Nigel Catterson is working with Scottish councils. It has also been suggested that the scheme could contribute to flood defences of Carlisle.

Note: The bidirectional turbine technology is as yet untried in sediment-laden fast-flowing tides. At lowest Spring tides, there small amount of water in the channel is mainly from Rivers Esk & Eden – though the ‘weir’ would hold back water (salt and fresh) to create a head of pressure.

Lagoons

Russell lagoons are U-shaped, joined at each end to the coast

Ullman offshore lagoons are circular (‘doughnuts’), free-standing in the estuary

1. Tidal Lagoon Power

TLP’s original proposal was for 6 Russell  lagoons – Wales (Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Colwyn), Bridgewater Bay, and the Solway (Workington-Dubmill Point).

All emphasis has been on Swansea, the smallest:  Charles Hendry, in his January 2017 review of tidal power for the government, strongly recommended the Swansea project should be funded and built as a ‘pathfinder’ – ie allowed to run for 5 years, with its financial viability and its effect on the environment being monitored, before decisions were made about further schemes.

Despite the Environmental Impact Assessment having been carried out, and the supply-chain companies being on board, the Westminster government continually dithered about granting approval or approving the Contract for Difference price. In June 2018, Minister Greg Clarke stated the project would be too expensive, and would not give value for money, and so the government would not back the scheme.

The Welsh government is still keen to support the Swansea scheme and other players – financial and constructual – have come forward (December 2018). And TLP announced this month (February 2019) that it plans to go ahead without government backing, by signing Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) with other companies. TLP also has a new plan, to float solar panels in the lagoon, increasing power output by an estimated one-third.  As reported by the Guardian‘s energy correspondent Adam Vaughan, ‘The plan is to secure enough signed PPAs by the end of the year to enable a final investment decision in early 2020, with construction starting shortly afterwards. If that timetable were met, the project would be generating power in 2024 or 2025.’

But whether or not the Swansea lagoon will ever be built is still far from clear.

Tidal Electric (see below) submitted a response to the Hendry report, in favour of their own offshore lagoons

Note: Should Swansea ever go ahead, and be deemed successful as a ‘pathfinder’, Tidal Lagoon Power would then most probably focus attention on building another Welsh lagoon, eg Cardiff Bay.

TLP’s Solway project is now unlikely.

2. ARUP

A new suggestion since my 2015 blogpost: a Russell Lagoon.

These notes are from my conversations with Michael Osborne, Director, ARUP, Whitehaven. October 2018 and February 2019.

The wall of the proposed coastal tidal lagoon could be 18km (12 miles) long from just North of Maryport to Mawbray, effectively around the outside of the Allonby Bay Marine Conservation Zone.

The emphasis would be on local sourcing of rock materials. Ideas include: the bund core of waste slate from a quarry near Askam in Furness; outer rock armour – slate blocks or granite blocks from Askam in Furness or Kirkmabreck quarry near Creetown; inner rock armour might be red sandstone possibly from a quarry near Maryport – sandstone is more easily colonised by algae and marine animals. The water off Allonby Bay is fairly shallow so the wall would not need to be too large, but the deeper channel just NW of Maryport could be where the bi-directional turbines are sited.  The grid connection would be inshore of Maryport. .

Michael Osborne recognises the importance of the Allonby Bay Marine Conservation Zone. ‘It includes the sea-bed, and we must respect that – otherwise what would be the point of the designation?’

Note: this coastal lagoon option leaves Maryport harbour entrance and the mouth of the River Ellen open (unlike the Tidal Lagoon Power scheme); goes outside Allonby Bay MCZ; and the scheme could reduce the current rate of coastal erosion. This concept of a coastal tidal lagoon has been raised through the Maryport Delivery Plan.

This proposal currently has no financial backers. Michael Osborne thinks that the way forward for tidal power in general is for the government to support renewable energy schemes, including tidal, as a matter of policy. Regardless of policy tidal energy projects should be competitive with other energy sources.

The Labour Party have indicated an interest in renewables including wind, tidal and wave power.

3. Tidal Electric Consortium

A new suggestion since my 2015 blogpost: an Ullman lagoon (CEO of Tidal Electric is California-based Peter Ullman.)

Dr Amir Eilon (the sole Director of Ullman Offshore Lagoon; the rest of Tidal Electric’s Board are based in the US or Switzerland) has given two presentations to the Solway Firth Partnership in Dumfries, the most recent in association with syndicate members from Ecotricity and DEME (Dredging Environmental & Marine Engineering; Belgium)

Eilon has previously also discussed ideas for a Russell lagoon in the Solway (see ARUP, above).

This second presentation in December 2018 focussed only on the proposed Ullman lagoon – either off Hesten Island (D&G) or off Allonby Bay MCZ; the power generated would be onshore-d to Cumbria, where the existing grid has capacity.

The circular wall, 16km in perimeter, would be constructed of geotubes covered by locally-sourced external rock armour, with sluice gates and turbines in a block. The plan is for 55 turbines, producing 388 MW; the estimated cost of approximately £710m depends on rock source/price, turbine price etc – in other words, on several currently known unknowns.

Ovals indicate possible lagoon sites in the Firth (from Tidal Electric’s presentation slide)

As for siting, if the lagoon is constructed in 10m depth of water, fewer and bigger turbines are required; if in shallower water, for example 5m, 100-150 smaller turbines might be necessary. From the geological point of view, the English side is better, because of the sandstone bedrock, but it is also more exposed (and next to the Allonby Bay MCZ); on the Scottish side near Heston Island, the sea-bed is more pitted but is more sheltered.

Since the lagoon is not connected to the coast, there is no access other than by boat (‘We don’t do tourism’), so there would be no H&S constraints with regard to visiting tourists. The wall would therefore be cheaper to build, have a much lower profile and therefore much less visual impact than the wall of a Russell lagoon.

Note: The syndicate will not commit to further work on the project unless they receive assurances that the government is willing to support tidal power generation. Eilon was supposedly meeting with the UK government’s Energy Minister in January 2019, but that meeting has now been postponed until March. Interestingly, Tidal Electric’s website now refers to this as a ‘Scotland’ project, (rather than a Solway project, as previously): make of that what you will!

A general point about timescales

Even if a lagoon, of either sort, should be given approval tomorrow – the time to power generation is in the region of about 7-8 years.

Scoping, modelling, working out risk mitigation, gaining the necessary permissions, public consultations, planning applications, agreeing Contract for Difference price with the government and so on would take 3-4 years.

The actual construction phase – requiring movements of large amounts of material by land, rail and sea; dredging; cable-laying; building the walls and turbine housing; building onshore works and offices; environmental remediation etc – would take a further 3-4 years.

And my personal view

It is such a startlingly obvious idea, to capture the mighty energy of the seas that surround our islands – the waves, the predictable tidal flows – and to convert this into the electrical power that we will increasingly need (imagine all those electric cars). The technologies and designs are challenging – for unstartlingly obvious reasons – but are exciting and always advancing.

Until fairly recently I believed that nuclear power should also be part of the portfolio, partly because West Cumbria already has such a concentration of nuclear expertise, and the influx of jobs and the continuing necessary financial support would be vital for the area’s economy: but my opinion has changed (as has, it seems, the government’s, although for different reasons – the new nuclear build proposed for the Moorhouse site has been cancelled).

Wind, water and sunshine could together provide a smoothed-out supply of energy for our use. But we also need the technology to store the electricity and release at peak demand; we need large-scale technology to split water to release hydrogen, which can be burnt – cleanly – to generate power.

All this is possible, even though as a country we are coming to it much too tardily and with only a fragmentary long-term plan. We should be concentrating our research and resources on adding tidal and wave power to our portfolio. More than ever we need to stop using fossil fuels to provide energy. The current extremes in climate breakdown hint that we may already be too late.

So: power must be generated where there are ‘big tides’.

But in the Solway Firth?

I swither.

The Solway is so ‘unspoilt’ by humans, and most of the changes that occur are natural, the result of interactions between storms and tides and rivers.

So I hate the thought of the years’-long, major, disruptions to the Firth of constructing the lagoons: the noise, both air-borne and water-borne; the traffic on land and sea; the dumping of rocks; the hauling of cement; and around it all, the swirling sediment.

I swither again. I remember how the Solway’s margins – the mudflats and the saltmarshes – have changed over thousands of years, and I think that the Firth and its non-human inhabitants will, eventually, adapt.

And yet … This ‘intervention’ would be so dramatic, a mere eye-blink in geological and evolutionary terms, that it would require the Solway’s creatures – the salmonids that pass through to breed, the fish that browse on the sea-bed, the micro-organisms and invertebrate animals that live on or in the mud and sand and rocks, the algae and saltmarsh plants – to survive and feed and breed despite ‘the storm’.

Already the numbers of so many of the creatures and plants with whom we share this space have plummeted. For many more, in this precious and protected finger of the sea, this disruption could be the final straw.

NIMBY-ism? No: it’s not my backyard, is it? It’s their’s.

I cannot swither any more.

Port Carlisle: canals and ships and trains

The Port, the Firth, and Scotland (photo: Ann Lingard)

Red line marks steamer pier; oval the position of the locks (photo: Ann Lingard)

When the tide is out, Port Carlisle’s former life is laid bare in stark, dark shapes.

A line of rotten wooden stumps, marching out across the mud, scarcely hints that here was once the steamer pier.

Posts of the steamer pier, the dock, and the coaling wharf

Out beyond the whale-back of mud and stone in the centre of the dock is a long, stone wharf, a jumble of straight lines and ragged edges: red sandstone blocks, their intertidal surfaces dark with fucoids, greened at the high tideline, and speckled with yellow and grey lichen – the coaling wharf, disconnected from the shore, disconnected from the sandstone quay, disconnected from the village.

The coaling wharf (and ‘garden’)

To reach the wharf I squelch across mud and shelly sand, noting the footprints and beak-probes of waders; I climb over fallen blocks of dressed sandstone, coated green with Ulva, up onto what was the working surface of the wharf – and find a wild garden of blazing yellow gorse, grass and pink thrift.

Wooden fender, steamer pier in the distance

Out on the wharf

Out on the wharf

Looking towards the steamer pier

 

There is a wall of part-dressed red blocks, some shifted by the tides, and granite bollards, pale speckled grey, geologically incongruous  – fallen sideways, unmoored. Sandstone steps, green and slimy, lead down to the muddy seabed of the dock. I find strange shapes of flattened metalwork in the stone, bolts that are twisted and rusty, decayed wooden fenders, and dislodged sandstone, the edges of the wharf no longer neat and protective. And a strong sense of the past, a place of bollards and hawsers, where boats came up from Liverpool, picking the right tides to negotiate the Firth’s notorious sandbanks; and tied up to collect or deliver coal and goods and people, that were then transported up the canal to Carlisle.

On the wharf

Granite bollard

Bollard unmoored

The eastern, seaward side slopes gently towards the water, a shore of mud, red clay and shells, from which pebbles have been scooped and thrown up onto the wharf.

Standing on top of the wharf I look North across the Solway to Scotland and the sheds of Eastriggs munitions depot, that are low and an unnatural pale-green, failing to be inconspicuous. To my right is the vast Rockcliffe marsh at the head of the Firth, barely visible beyond a low headland that anchors the shiny mud of the low-tide bay in place; intersecting lines of mud and sand and water, silver, pewter, ochre, where  oyster-catchers and two curlews pipe and forage. And here on my left, across the dock, are the houses of a port that was once an insignificant place known as Fisher’s Cross.

That dark mound in the centre of the dock, that rarely gets covered by the tide, is not a merely a heap of pebbly sediment, swirled and dumped by the tides: originally built as a stone breakwater, it forced a splitting of the ebbing and flowing tides, to reduce the silting of the harbour. Beyond it, the red sandstone of the quay where ships once unloaded passengers and goods, is still visible.

Looking across to the harbour wall

From the top of the harbour wall

Winkles pick their way …

The tide is coming in fast now, the wave-fronts creamed with brown froth, and I pick my way back across the mud, where the mouths of tiny burrows spurt water with each footfall. The mudflats are home to a rich community of animals. Winkles crawl amongst the pebbles and spiralling fucoid fronds, and the empty valves of pink tellins and chalky grey clams crunch underfoot. A Little Egret, shocking in its whiteness, flaps slowly along the shore.

I find a few ragged-topped wooden stakes, blackened and soft, which hold memories of the narrow rail track along which horse-drawn wagons teetered to the wharf.

The quay by the village is disrupted by a gap, through which a sluggish stream of water trickles across the mud at low tide. Here is the ghost of the sea-lock that marked the end of the Carlisle canal.

Wall of the outer lock

The outer lock

The tide creeps in

Little remains except the sandstone walls, and it’s not easy now to imagine the two lock-gates with their associated wheels and handles. Between 1823 and 1853 the canal was the route to the Solway, and thence to Annan, Liverpool and Ireland, for ships carrying goods from the warehouse at Carlisle, and for goods and coal in the other direction, brought up along the coast. Laden barges and ships travelled in both direction along the canal, being swung round in the now-overgrown turning circle by the lock. High walls of dressed stone are almost hidden by shrubs and dangling ivy.

People travelled, too, mostly away from Cumberland – to Scotland, the Isle of Man or Ireland or further, emigrating from Liverpool to America. The jagged line of stumps, like broken teeth, to the West of the port are all that remains of the steamer pier, which was built out into the Firth so that arrivals and departures would not be limited by the tides. Outgoing passengers and sight-seers crammed onto passage-boats that left the Carlisle basin and travelled along the canal, the schedule timed to rendezvous with the steamer.

The bath-house today

 

The former Solway Hotel and the Steam-Packet Inn offered shelter and refreshment; a bath-house with heated sea-water pumped from the Firth provided ‘spa’ facilities, and the Wesleyan Methodist chapel on the outskirts looked after people’s souls.

 

All ports require a Customs House, preferably large and imposing, and new local housing was equally smart: a terrace of elegant Georgian houses – now Listed – each with individually designed fan-lights above the door; a house with a sandstone Roman altar embedded in the stone-work; a Wesleyan Methodist chapel.

Fanlights

Fanlights

Fanlights

Fanlights

 

Port Carlisle had style, it had stunning views, it was busy, a tourist destination and a stepping stone to the New World. By 1854 it even had a railway station.  The canal’s working life had been relatively short, and eventually uneconomic. It was filled in – and railway tracks laid. At first steam trains carried passengers and freight. When that too proved a financial embarrassment, passengers were pulled in the horsedrawn ‘Dandy’ along the rails between Burgh and the Port. But finally, after a range of transport methods had been tried and failed, the line closed and was dismantled.

Station platform

Back in the village I wander round a weedy, grassy rectangle, kicking weeds from the low brick-edged platform which is all that remains of the station terminal. The station house itself has been converted into a private dwelling.

 

 

The Port’s former life is imprinted in large detail on the landscape and the shore. It’s not too difficult to imagine the comings and goings, the excitement of a new vessel’s arrival up the Firth; the driving rain and fast-ebbing tides that kept ships stalled across at Annan; the passage boat’s arrival at the final lock, laden with sight-seers, emigrants, and their baggage; the wet, impatient, hungry, passengers drinking in the pubs; the racket of the crane and laden shaky wagons; or the soft light of a tender Solway day encouraging walkers to stroll along the road.

But it is the small details that stay in my mind: letters ‘JW’ precisely engraved in a block by the canal; rusty bolts; flattened metal shapes found both on the wharf and on the quay; the zoned colours of sea-weeds, weathered and wave-washed sandstone and lichen; the glistening mud speckled with stones; the single dark pockmark on each dressed block where pincers lifted it into place.

Details

“J.W”

A square-sided bollard

As the tide flows into the vacated basin of the port, the place is again populated, with hundreds of gulls and ducks, sitting quietly on the silvery surface of the water, enjoying the ride.

The incoming tide

And now …

This is not a sad place. There may no longer a busy-ness on the streets and quay, but the inner life of the village is full of pride and warm memories. The lady who lives in the former Bath-house once invited me inside to look at its original features; friends have been given impromptu conducted tours along the quay, and recently villagers and other local people took party in the ‘Remembering the Solway’ oral history project, meeting regularly in the Methodist Chapel: their reminiscences were recorded and transcribed, and in the accompanying film Daphne Hoggs remembers learning to swim in the harbour, and how she and her friends would swim from the central ‘island’ to the wharf steps.

The ‘heritage’ group discuss the lock

One result of the Heritage Project

Oral history in the Methodist Chapel

In the related ‘Port Carlisle Heritage Project’ run by the North of England Civic Trust, the villagers explored the Port’s history, and illuminated it for visitors with helpful information boards.

It’s a place where people get on with their daily lives, yet are able to delight in their village’s very special place on the edge of the Solway Firth, a stepping-stone between land and sea and distant countries.

 

Where to find out more:

David Ramshaw’s history of The Carlisle Ship Canal, 2013, P3 Publications, ISBN 978-0-9572412, is packed with photos, newscuttings and maps.

 

Remembering the Solway oral history project. In the film,  Daphne Hogg remembers her childhood, and swimming at Port Carlisle

The Port Carlisle Heritage Project: Ruth Lord gives an illustrated talk about the Port and the project

The ‘Dandy’ is now in the National Railway Museum

Tracking Triops, the elusive Tadpole Shrimp

Triops cancriformis adult (photo thanks to Larry Griffin)

In August, after the long weeks of cloudless blue skies, and heat that shimmered over the cracked mud of the merse, the rain came. The jet stream had looped into another orientation, and the rain fell day after day for a week. Dr Larry Griffin emailed me: “the rain after the heat has brought the eggs out of stasis in at least two pools” and so he was ready to take a small group to have a look.

Larry is the Principal Species Research Officer at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) Caerlaverock Reserve on the north coast of the Solway Firth, near Dumfries, and Caerlaverock is one of only two places in the UK where the rare and elusive tadpole shrimp, Triops cancriformis, is – occasionally – found. [1]

The modern story of Triops is a story of discovery and loss and re-discovery. But this is an animal that has scarcely changed since the Triassic period – its fossils date back two hundred million years. It is a freshwater Crustacean, belonging to the Order Notostraca, and looks very similar to (but is unrelated to) a small horseshoe crab as it trundles around on the bottom of a pond: its head and thorax are covered by a carapace, like a shield, so that from above its legs and mouthparts are scarcely visible.

Was it always the case that Triops lived, fed and bred in freshwater pools? This is a dangerous life-strategy yet despite, or because of, this danger the animals evolved a means of surviving when the pools dried out. Today, they are found only in ephemeral pools in the New Forest and on the saltmarshes (merse) and wet pastures around Caerlaverock. They can live for two to three months, or until the tide inundates the merse – and when the pools dry out under the hot summer sun, the adults die and disappear. But in the drying sediment their eggs live on, yet ‘switched off’ in a state of diapause.

When the rain comes and the pond re-wets, the eggs are stimulated to hatch – and the larvae feed and grow very quickly, so that adults are ready to lay eggs within as little as two to three weeks from hatching. As Larry says, “They can flash in and out of existence – it’s just luck whether you find them. It needs an inquisitive person … in the right place at the right time, who thinks ‘Oooh, what’s that?’ ”

This explains why the Triops’ story has been so exciting and challenging; for me even more so because this special animal survives just across the Solway from where I live, and I now have a chance to see the creatures alive, rather than – many years ago – pickled in formalin in an undergraduate Invertebrate Zoology class.

It was more than 100 years ago that Triops (then known as Apus) was found on the merse, by F. Balfour-Brown. Forty years later, in 1948, in a paper to Nature, he wrote (or narrated – the style of scientific writing was much more like story-telling than it is now):

“In September 1907 I discovered two shallow grassy pools on the Preston sea merse, near Southwick, Kirkcudbrightshire, in which Apus was present. In one of these it was so abundant that when I raised my eleven-inch ring net out of the water it was half full of specimens, mostly full-grown. I searched many other pools in the same area but without finding it and, returning to the same pools a few days later, I found the edges covered with the shells and very few specimens left in the water. The gulls had discovered this mass of food and had destroyed most of the Apus. I have visited the area many times during the last forty years but not until this month, working the merse near the mouth of the Southwick burn, have I again seen Apus. My son found three specimens in a pool which then yielded us about thirty or more, and several other pools near the first produced small numbers, mostly immature.”

These pools were subsequently lost through erosion of the merse, but Tadpole Shrimps were found again, nearly 20 kms away, in 2004.

Larry grinned as he told me about his own discovery. “I’d been out looking for natterjack tadpoles, it was quite a late season. I thought I might as well have a look in that pool – and there they [the Triops] were, tons of them!”

A Triops in the hand …

Several Triops and other invertebrate animals

He wasn’t immediately sure what he had found, until he took some of the animals back to the lab. “It was a gradual dawning… I was looking in the back of a Collins book, I think it was – there was a drawing, a silhouette. And then I had a memory of someone from the RSPB, who had been talking about trying to introduce them somewhere – and then it was ‘hang on, this is that incredibly rare thing’!”

Collaboration with Dr Ruth Feber [2], from Oxford University’s WILDCru, and Professor Colin Adams of Glasgow University’s Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE), and their colleagues, led to discussions, then further investigations and research at WWT Caerlaverock.

Colin and colleagues collected sediment from the bottom of 86 ponds at Caerlaverock. It was known that the eggs or cysts needed to be desiccated to enter the quiescent, diapause, state, so samples were dried out and then incubated in fresh water at 20^oC. Samples from just two ponds produced living larvae (nauplii). And then, “During the preparation of this [scientific] paper, on 29 July 2010, a population of c. 100+ adults of various sizes up to 3cm were discovered by chance in another ephemeral pond 80m west of the original 2004 site on the Caerlaverock upper salt marshes. This pool was largely created by tractor wheel ruts and cattle movements in an area of gorse (Ulex sp.) and rushes (Juncus effusus).” [3]

As a result of this serendipitous discovery, just three ponds at Caerlaverock were found to be home to Tadpole Shrimps!

Rubbing post & pond where Triops has been found

Cattle on the merse

It’s thought that eggs are spread in several ways – through the guts of animals, on the feet of cattle, deer, or geese, “Anything traipsing around, really,” Larry says. This includes the tyres of tractors and quad bikes, and because the Tadpole Shrimps are hermaphrodite, “It just needs one egg, and after it hatches and survives, you could then get hundreds.”

Sometimes the shrimps themselves have been found, other times it has been the presence of the eggs in washed and filtered sediment samples. Larry reckons there could be stores of eggs of different ages in some of the sites. “I feel a lot better knowing that it’s not just in the one pool!”

Dried mud samples in the lab

He has collected mud from the ponds, as a safety precaution and also as part of his research. There’s a shelf in his office piled with polythene bags that contain mud-samples dating back to 2008. “I wet them every September – so far, they’re still hatching out. This year will be the tenth year [to test them].”

Larry uses tanks of de-chlorinated tap-water, bubbled with air for a day to oxygenate it, then throws in the mud-sample containing eggs. “It’s really low-tech! I feed them on fish food and a bit of sea-weed to provide some iodine. They show good behaviour! They learn that when I come into the office, I’ll feed them. They come up to the surface – and I sprinkle the food on the surface, and they turn over and swim on their backs so they can take it with their little legs.”

The adult shrimps lay their eggs in little scrapes in the mud. From an egg less than 0.5mm diameter, an adult can grow up to 7 cm long when reared in the lab. It reaches maturity by passing through several larval stages, each of which grows then moults its skin, or exuvium, before passing on to the next stage.

How often does Larry find the Triops out on the merse? “Most years. It depends on the weather, but if conditions are right, you can easily see them crawling around. One clue is the exuviae, you find them wind-blown at the end of a pond.”

When Larry emailed me after the rain, it was because he had seen these papery skins at the edges of a pond and found some nauplii. But finding a date for even our small group of privileged people to join him proved impossible – and the pools dried out again. This was not to be the year when I would see living Triops in the wild.

Are they living on the other Solway saltmarshes, at Rockcliffe, say, or at Campfield or Newton Arlosh? After all, these are no distance as the goose flies (and large flocks of geese do fly between these sites).

Barnacle geese at Caerlaverock, February 2016

People have looked, and Bart Donato, of Natural England, who has a great interest in Rockcliffe, says the shrimps have never been found there. But it needs someone to be there at exactly the right time, someone who can recognise what they are seeing.

Now, though, there’s a new molecular diagnostic technique available, to test environmental samples for a range of ‘eDNA’ – fragments of genes that are species-characteristic and which may have been left ‘lying around’ in the environment. Graham Sellers from Hull University has recently developed this ‘DNA bar-coding’ technique for Triops and, working with Larry, has established the existence of the shrimp in six ponds at Caerlaverock. [4]

Location & condition of Triops egg-banks: Fig 4 from the paper by Sellers et al 2017 (see below)

Perhaps this technique can now be used for pools on the other Solway saltmarshes?

It would be exciting, and a relief, to find that the story of the rare and elusive Triops can be expanded to a few more chapters: that this enigmatic survivor will remain an important addition to the other ‘shrimps’ – brown shrimps and mudshrimps – of the Solway.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping for a hot dry summer in 2019, followed by a spell of rain …

Notes:

1.Triops cancriformis is classified as Endangered, listed as a priority BAP species, and specially protected under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

2. Ruth Feber et al. June 2011. Ecology and conservation of the Tadpole Shrimp, Triops cancriformis, in Britain. In British Wildlife, p334

3. Colin Adams et al. 2014. Short range dispersal by a rare, obligate freshwater crustacean Triops cancriformis (Bosc). In Aquatic Conservation: Marine & Freshwater Ecosystems. 24: 48–55

4. Graham Sellers et al. 2017. A new molecular diagnostic tool for surveying and monitoring Triops cancriformis populations. PeerJ 5:e3228; DOI 10.7717/peerj.3228

Recording the Solway’s amazing nature: a guest post by Deborah Muscat

Why we need to pay attention to the other living species with whom we share this area, and identify and record them. My thanks to Deborah Muscat, Manager of the Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre based in Carlisle, for writing this guest post.

In mid-April Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre (CBDC) and the Solway Coast AONB launched the Solway Nature Networks as a small project to encourage people to tell the CBDC what nature they had seen on their walks and travels around the area.  So why are we doing this – surely everyone knows what nature there is on the Solway?

First, a bit about me. I have some very early memories: one is looking at wiggly things in a hole filled with water in a tree, another is poking snails to make their eyes go in.  Cut to fifty years later and natural history still makes me excited – just as it did when I was four.

Having lived here for many years I have explored both the Solway coast and the plain.  I know that we live with wildlife that my friends in the South can only dream about; Hares, Natterjack toads, Curlew, Grey Partridge, Corn Marigold, Mudwort (more about these later) etc. But, because we have so much wildlife it becomes commonplace, and that is when it starts to become overlooked.

This was brought home to me when I started to work in Tullie House Museum for the CBDC, a small organisation that few people have ever heard of, but one that has a unique insight into 150 years’ of Cumbria’s natural history.

A wildlife (or biological) record consists of: what was seen, where it was seen, when it was seen and by whom.  Currently, CBDC has over 2.2 million individual records from the whole of Cumbria, and they include flowers, ferns, trees, seaweed, snails, worms, butterflies, beetles, flies, fish, to name but a few. But digging deeper into the data, it was clear that apart from information about birds and toads, CBDC receives only a few records from the Solway area each year.

Why does this matter?  All decisions about land use, management and development must consider biodiversity and this is where biological records are vital.  Increasingly makers look at dots on maps to discover the presence or absence of a species. However, an absence of a dot does not mean that something isn’t there!  But if decisions are made this way then we need to make sure that we record our wildlife so as to put the dots on the map.

This leads me on to another issue.  Observations of common species like the brown rat are not noted down; sightings of rare species like red squirrels are always recorded.  This skews our view of what is really out there.  Take the rat as an example.  According to the National Biodiversity Network Atlas, an online source of information used by Government about the distribution of species in the UK, there are two records of Brown Rat on the Solway Plain.  Experience tells me this is not true!  The Atlas also shows a similar number of House Mouse records.  Once a common sighting, few ecologists have seen a House Mouse recently and it could be becoming extinct without us even noticing.  Thus we need to start recording the common species as well as the rare and interesting ones.

It was this last fact that started to make me feel guilty – I hadn’t sent a record to CBDC for  years.  So, inspired by our new Solway Nature Network project I too have started to take a note-book and camera with me on my local walks.

I know a bit about wildlife but I am far from being an expert.  Like a lot of people I rely on photographs, books, other people and the internet to find out what I am looking at.  But even with my basic knowledge I am finding out what a remarkable place the Solway is.

Anyone travelling by Dub Mill at this time of the year will see a field yellow with flowers. These are corn marigolds (Chrysanthemum segetum), a species which was probably introduced to the UK in Neolithic times with grain from the Mediterranean.  Once an abundant sight in the cornfields of Britain is becoming rare.

Corn marigolds (photo: Debs Muscat)

Similarly, the nationally scarce Mudwort (Limosella gallica) thrives in the Summer on the dry muddy edges of Edderside pond.  Found on only 6 sites in Cumbria this small unassuming plant is disappearing as UK ponds are not allowed to dry up, or are lost altogether.

Many people are aware that the traditional Bluebell (Hyacynthoides non-scripta) is also in decline as it hybridises with the larger Spanish Bluebell grown in many gardens.  Here on the Solway Plain most of the ones we see are the native variety.  This fact inspired one of the new Solway Nature Network volunteers to go out and map the Solway’s bluebells, especially those on the banks at Crosscanonby.

The more volunteers we have the more eyes there are to spot rare and unusual wildlife. One such plant is the endangered small-flowered catchfly (Silene galica). I spotted this in New Cowper several years ago.  It had previously been seen in Silloth in 1877.  The catchfly has now almost disappeared from Northern Europe, and I have not seen it since in New Cowper as the field was reseeded with more vigorous clover and rye grass.  However, the catchfly could still be lurking in sandy soil around the edge of a field close by.

Having rediscovered the four-year-old in me I am always looking under stones, logs and leaves for “bugs”.  It is surprising what has turned up. On a dog walk at very low tide near Mawbray I picked up some sandstone. Underneath I spied something that looked like a woodlouse.  It turned out to be a waterlouse (Sphaeroma serratum). As it was only 0.5cm long I am not surprised that it is not something anyone had recorded before.  Because I am not a waterlouse expert I needed help from someone who is.

Fortunately, CBDC is part of a network of wildlife recorders and museums and we can usually track down someone who will confirm what has been found.

Indeed, a little brown thing, about 1 cm tall that I discovered on a leaf in Flimby Woods took a year to identify.  I found out from a gentleman in Scotland that it was a chocolate tube slime mould.  A Google search followed and to my astonishment I learned that a slime mould consists of several different types of single-celled organisms that exist as slime on decaying plant matter.  When the food starts to run out or conditions are not right these single-celled organisms begin to move and join together to create the reproductive structures that I had found.  I then read that there are scientists currently studying the slime mould “decision making” algorithm which is described as “a tendency to exploit environments in proportion to their reward based on previous experience”.  Apparently this is similar to the algorithm used by Amazon when it finds items that you might like to buy based on previous searches!

Stemonitis, the chocolate tube slime mould (photo: Debs Muscat)

More recently a shiny black beetle caught my eye.  Looking closely at the indentations on the wing cases and the shape of its “feet” I decided it could be the rare Chrysolina oricalcia, one of the leaf beetles.  This time I sent my pictures to John, a reknown beetle expert in Whitehaven.  He agreed with my identification and followed it up with “this beetle has not been seen in Cumbria since 1835.”

The beetle Chrysolina oricalcia (photo: Debs Muscat)

The more I look the more I am inspired to look again, and the more I learn – just as when I was four.  We really do live in a place that is home to some amazing plants and animals.  Our area is special and we should be proud that we haven’t lost as much of our wildlife as other parts of the UK.  However, we still need to know more about what is here to keep it that way. 

So why don’t you rediscover your inquisitive inner child and join the Solway Nature Network volunteers to find out about the wildlife on our doorstep?

To join in or find out more contact CBDC on 01228 618717 or visit their website.

 

Capturing a saltmarsh in words: a creative writing day on the Upper Solway

Saturday June 8th 2019, 10am-4pm; RSPB Campfield, Bowness-on-Solway, CA7 5AG

Looking across the Firth from Campfield Marsh

When you think of Cumbria you probably imagine the Lake District; you might even think of the Solway’s beaches like St Bees’ or Allonby – but it’s highly unlikely that you ever think about the saltmarshes that line the margins of the Upper Solway from Grune Point to Rockcliffe.

And yet, these are some of the most special and protected areas in our county (see for example, my piece about the conservation acronyms and their ‘stories’).

When people visit the upper reaches of the Firth, especially around Anthorn, Bowness-on-Solway and Burgh-by-Sands, they are often surprised and astonished that such scenery exists in the same county as the fells and lakes.

But this isn’t just ‘scenery’: these are places that are home to a huge abundance of living creatures. My greatest wish is that more people should be aware of and care for this area of mud and marsh, where waders and migrant birds feed, and where the inhabitants  need to be so exquisitely adapted. Not only must these plants and animals live with the changeable weather and the seasons, but also with the twice-daily cycle of the tides, and the consequent shifts in salinity and currents, and the changing presence of food and predators.

The saltmarsh by RSPB’s Campfield Reserve is, like other saltmarshes,  fretted with creeks. It’s an open – but not dauntingly vast – space, bordering acres of mud at low tide, and looking across the Firth to nearby Scotland. You can feel a ‘strong sense of place’. The sounds, the sights, the smells, even the history – how will you experience, and record them?

 

On this day of creative writing – fiction, and non-fiction (but not poetry, I’m afraid) – we will spend time out on the marsh, wandering, observing, examining the minute creatures that live in the muddy creeks, listening, chatting. And then we’ll go back inside, into the Solway Wetlands Centre on the reserve, to warm up, eat and drink, and each – with the help of some simple writing exercises – think about what might have inspired us during the morning.

Important information:

This event is run on behalf of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust; it’s free but, as charities, CWT and/or the RSPB would be delighted with a small donation, perhaps a minimum of £5

Where: The venue is RSPB Campfield Marsh, Bowness on Solway, CA7 5AG

When: Saturday JUne 8th, 10am-4pm

Booking:  through Cumbria Wildlife Trust, either by phone 01539 816300 or email mail@cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk . See also the Events section of their website.

What to wear: You will need wellies (essential) – and bring warm clothes and waterproofs.

What to bring: Tea and coffee (and cake) will be provided, but bring your own lunch. And don’t forget a pen and notebook, and perhaps a camera.

If you want to do a little preparation there are interesting pieces about the ‘new nature writing’, by for example Mark Cocker  and Peter Reason.

George Monbiot writes about the ‘need for new words’.

And should you want to read about my own fiction writing (novels, short stories) please do browse the relevant sections of my Eliot and Entropy blog.  I taught creative writing classes for the Adult Education Centres in Oxford, Cockermouth and Keswick for several years.

The Solway saltmarshes

Dawn over Calvo Marsh (photo: Ann Lingard)

At first light on a Sunday morning in late September, Norman Holton sat on the edge of Campfield Marsh near Bowness on the Solway. On the Scottish side the starlings were, as usual, gathering in great wheeling clouds, and as usual there were several sparrowhawks flying above them, attempting to pick off a few for breakfast. This time, though, the starling-cloud spiralled round and round, and the mass of birds coalesced and flew across the Solway. Norman estimated that there were two million birds: “They were flying low, about 10 feet above the water, coming straight towards me. I couldn’t see the ends of it, from Cardurnock to beyond Herdhill Point, the flock was so wide. It must have taken 10 minutes to pass over – it lifted slightly to pass over the marsh, flying right over my head. The noise! And the wind of their wings, the draught! I was absolutely plastered in crap. But it was fantastic – the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up just telling you about it!”

Creeks at the edge of Campfield Marshfurther up the Solway (photo: Ann Lingard)

Campfield Marsh and Bowness Common

Cardurnock, with Moricambe Bay beyond

(Photos taken from a gyroplane flight: see The design of the Solway, an aerial perspective)

Norman Holton [*] was Senior Sites Manager of the RSPB’s Cumbria Coast Reserves until 2016, and not one to exaggerate about bird numbers. The Campfield Reserve, based at North Plain Farm, and situated between Anthorn and Bowness-on-Solway, has 2 miles of coastline and about 50 hectares of saltmarsh, as well as about 500 hectares of arable land and raised bog, and it is host to thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of wildfowl and wading birds. But on the day I first met Norman, back in 2004, the tide was well out and the bird-flocks had dispersed to feed across the miles of glistening sand. Our wellies made perfect prints in the overlying layer of mud as we, too, left the saltmarsh and walked out into the estuary.

There was food all around us: small shore crabs scuttling; patches of tiny black flecks that were snails, Hydrobia; the surfaces of shallow pools suddenly churned by the skittering of minute fish and gammarid shrimps; sandy coils ejected by lugworms; minute holes made by burrowing shrimp-like Corophium; and the empty shells of cockles and pink tellins that, when alive, had burrowed in the sand near the low-tide mark.

Even though the Scottish coast was only three miles away across the Firth and houses and cars startlingly clear, the space and emptiness – and silence – were almost overwhelming. Sheep and cows were grazing the marsh in the distance, the sun was a pale disc above the haze, and for a while, until the tide turned and the birds returned, there was peace; a privilege.

Grazing stock at Campfield Marsh (photo: Ann Lingard)

If you stand on the bridge at Boustead Hill, between Drumburgh Moss and Burgh by Sands, and look North-East, the salt-marshes of Burgh and Rockcliffe are pale green and deceptively smooth. Cattle are grazing or dozing, and beyond them lies a gleaming sliver of water in the channels of the Esk and Eden; there’s little movement except the speeding rectangles that are lorries on the distant motorway near Gretna – it’s all very domesticated and safe. But common sense as well as the notices warning of quicksands and dangerous currents will tell you that it’s probably not a good idea to wander on the sands here at the head of the estuary, that the sea will come charging in when the tide turns. Of course you could hurry to the safety of that smooth green saltmarsh … Norman spoke about a day on Rockcliffe Marsh when the tide came in fast, quickly rising to cover the grass; grabbing his tripod and telescope he hurried back towards his car, trying to watch for hazards in the turbid water – and fell into a deep creek. “It was February, freezing cold,” he said, “it took me ages to get to the car and I had no dry clothes.” “So what did you do?” “Put the heater on high, stripped off and drove home in my underpants.”

However, on a warm August day at Campfield he led me across the saltmarsh, stepping over deep potholes, jumping across creeks, and following the cattle-trails that divert around the meanders and oxbows of the water-courses; it is certainly not a smooth, safe surface.

Accretion and erosion after the winter 2015 storms (photo: Ann Lingard 2016)

The topography of marsh is always changing, a balance between water and plants. Norman pointed to a metre-high tower, capped with grass but with steep bare sides: some of the towers and hummocks collapse, while elsewhere the sediment builds up, the amount changing every day with every tide.

Despite the mutability of the lower reaches, if you look carefully at the marsh and its surrounds you can see that there is a logic to the structure. The single-track road is built on a raised beach, and the marsh steps down from it in three tiers. At the top there is gorse and tough creeping couch-grass, thistles, clumps of pink-flowered rest-harrow, and low purple asters; damp hollows are filled with rush, Juncus, and sedge. Walk towards the sea and you step down a small “cliff” of sand onto the next tier, where the salt-tolerant grass, Pulcinellia maritima, is like shiny wire, and there are low broad-leaved plants like silverleaf. The vegetated cushions, speckled with pink thrift, taper down towards the sand and there, at the edge and marching outwards towards the sea are the “pioneer species”.

Solitary, upright, their limbs pointing defiantly upwards, they appear intrepid and surreal. I had a distinct impression that they would advance a few centimetres, triffid-like, the instant I looked away. Some had gathered a little sand around themselves to form an embryo island, some of the islands had accumulated a tuft or two of grass; each island would consolidate and grow and the marsh would spread outwards. The plants are samphire or glass-wort, Salicornia, pale-green and fleshy. Norman said he used to fry them in butter and eat them when he was an impoverished RSPB worker on The Wash, and he picked off a piece for me to try. It was juicy and salty and delicious. I was an instant convert.

Samphire & Pulcinellia grass

Samphire: brave pioneers

On the seaward side of a small green island is a mat of a surprisingly spiky plant, Spartina anglica. Spartina, too, is a pioneer and in more than one sense, for the genus is an import from America.

Spartina on the right-hand side

“It’s an absolute pain,” Norman told me. “Once it gets a foothold it spreads and spreads.” The seeds come in on the rising tide, and get deposited as the tide goes out; they germinate and grow and trap silt, raising the level of the marsh.

Later we found perfect unblemished mushrooms, but the most exciting though inedible find was a crumbly, grey deposit, thumb-sized, that glitters with fish-scales when I picked it up. Otter droppings! I’ve been told (by an otter-spotter) that otter spraint smells of violets unlike that of mink which stinks – and it certainly smelled sweetish, although “violets” didn’t instantly come to mind.

Down the coast, the sea nibbles away at the dunes, sea-walls and shores. The northerly longshore drift and storms that stir up the shallow Solway ensure that at high Spring tides or when the wind is driving the water up the Firth, the waves deposit their load of silt on the saltmarshes. A so-called “mucky tide” may deposit a few centimetres of sandy silt, and thus the potholes gradually get filled in and vegetated, the meanders get cut off – and the grass becomes salty and unpalatable, ungrazed until the next rain.

It’s astonishing to realise that the Solway marshes have been grazed for over 1000 years. Grazing has made them the globally – not just locally – important places that they are, the place where “the world population of barnacle geese”, as many as 30,000 birds, overwinters, for example, and because of this the marshes have a string of initials after their names: SSSI, SAC, NNR … all those somewhat distancing though extremely important conservation acronyms.

“Summer Shower – Grazing cattle on Campfield Marsh.” John Rogers

(My grateful thanks to John for permission to use this image)

In 2001, during the Foot & Mouth crisis when the grazing stock was “cleared”, the Solway’s salt-marshes changed dramatically. Brian Irving, Manager of the Solway Coast AONB which includes the Skinburness marsh near Silloth, told me: “It was the first time in my lifetime that I saw the marshes really flower, you know. The first time in their history of grazing – an increased level of genetic diversity going on because the plants were allowed to flower and set seed, rather than propagate by roots and suckers. Stunning, the quality and texture of the marshes. A once-in-a-lifetime sight – and it was there for all the wrong reasons,” and he enthused about the overall orange hue, the buttery-yellow, the coppery tones of the fescue, and the pink drifts of thrift.

Thrift at Campfield. (With thanks to Judith Rogers)

Most of the marshes are predominantly common land whose area is divided into “stints”; a Marsh Committee allots each grazier a certain number of stints, each of which may carry a set number of cattle or sheep. The animals roam free, the stints are not limited by fences – except around the RSPB Reserve, where a neighbour’s Texels, probably muttering about their right to roam and humming “the other man’s grass is always greener” were that day chomping at the turf. However, they casually, without quite appearing to capitulate, wandered back towards their home stints when they saw us. Campfield is grazed by up to 100 beef cattle between May and October; in theory the stocking density is 0.6 units per hectare, the optimum to get the sward “into condition” for feeding and nesting birds and to minimise trampling of lapwing and redshank nests.

Norman told me that his system for managing the grassland was simple: “When I came here 12 years ago my complete knowledge of farming came from ‘The Archers’. But with the help of the local graziers we’ve learnt to balance the birds’ needs with the cattle’s needs. Basically, when the grass is up to my ankles it’s about right, below that I need to take a few stock off. Managing the grass looks very scientific, but in the end, it’s how far it comes up your wellies!”

Cows at Campfield

Sheep on the flooded marsh at Grune Point

Redshanks prefer tufts of grass to nest against; lapwings like to nest in open areas; roosting waders prefer short grass so they can watch for predators when the tide pushes them off the mudflats. The diversity and number of birds that come to the Solway coast is astonishing, and sightings are well-logged on many websites and blogs – for as well as the expected waders like dunlin, knot, red- and green-shank, godwits, curlews, oystercatchers, and the species that prefer the fields and wooded fringes like the plovers, tree-sparrows, linnets and so on, there are sightings of cranes, spoonbills, egrets, red kites, short-eared owls and ospreys. While Norman and I searched the edges of the small pools on the upper tier of the marsh for natterjack toadlets, a green sandpiper swooped down to the water, and a ruff had been seen the day before.

Then there are the geese. Their arrival is an event of local importance, something to anticipate. “Are the geese back yet?”: everyone is listening for their honking and calling; looking upwards, away from the flickering masses of knot and dunlin skimming over the sands and the black-and-white binary flashes of the oystercatcher flocks, hoping to see geese circling to land instead of passing over in a V.

In mid-September, the first of the Pink-footed geese start flying in from Iceland; most carry on to The Wash and Martinmere from Iceland, but a couple of thousand remain on the Solway. Those who went further South start moving North again in the New Year, and from mid-January to mid-March you can see them in vast numbers on the salt-marshes and fields. Barnacle geese from Svalbard arrive on the Solway in early October, and they stay, right through to the end of April and early May.

Barnacle geese on a  field next to Campfield Marsh

It is during that period, from mid-September to April, that the grasslands and the carefully-managed sward on the saltmarsh are especially important as they provide grazing for the geese that are escaping the Arctic temperatures of the far North.

But you don’t have to be a “birder” to fall under the spell of the salt-marshes – even here, where the Firth is narrowing down, constrained by its banks at the top of the estuary, it seems to be the sense of spaciousness and wildness that exerts the strongest emotions.

“It’s the wilderness … to come back to the Solway and sit on the saltmarsh at dawn … Everything has got its place. The birds start to fly off the sands, the golden plover first, then curlew, godwit. Every dawn is different because of the tide – the different height, different wind, it’s very variable. It’s rare for there to be the same conditions from one day to the next. I love the dynamism of the tides and the wildness of the marsh. On the seaward edge there are no street-lights, you can’t hear any traffic. Even after all this time it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck,” Brian Irving told me.

John and Judith Rogers’ house overlooks the Solway, and the salt-marsh’s character is part of their lives: it can be “transformed in moments by a storm sweeping in from the Irish sea: the wind picking up – hail showers sweeping across, pushing the tide relentlessly into the creeks and channels and overflowing, even on to the roads… But all this can change again within the hour. The tide goes out, the clouds disappear … sunlight sweeping across the mud flats; highlighting swathes of golden gorse; catching the sudden glint of gulls and flocks of waders wheeling back and forth …”.

And Brian Hodgson, a wildfowler, told me, “I just like being out here and being part of it, the early morning, the solitude of it.”

In memory of Norman Holton.

“If I was a cow, I’d be happy on the marsh! It’s just the best place to be”

(Photo: Ann Lingard, 2004)

***

[*] Norman Holton died in the autumn of 2016; a great ‘Solway man’, he continues to be very much missed by his many friends and colleagues.

***

The first version of this article was published in Cumbria Life in 2004; I have since updated it with extra information and photos.

RSPB Campfield Reserve, tel: 016973 51330, is a reserve that is open to all. The Solway Wetlands Centre is also there, with an information area and a comfortable room in which to sit and drink coffee!

There is an excellent blog by John and Judith Rogers on what is to be seen at the Campfield Reserve.

Capturing memories: the ‘Remembering the Solway’ oral history project

Pupils from Kirkbride Primary School look at ‘Household Objects’ (photo: Naomi Hewitt)

‘I’ve enjoyed every single bit of it – every interview, every person has been a sheer gem,’ Jean Graham told us at the celebration that marked the end of the oral history project, Remembering the Solway. ‘And how marvellous it is that all these people are gathered here enjoying a few hours of reminiscing – and it isn’t a funeral!’

Naomi, currently Assistant Manager of the Solway Coast AONB and former Manager of the SWLP, has overseen the project since its inception about three years ago; Remembering the Solway has been one of the 29 schemes in the Solway Wetland Landscape Partnership’s four-year HLF-funded project.

‘We wanted to capture the memories of people who have lived and worked on the Solway Plain,’ Naomi Hewitt said. ‘The idea came from Sarah Hodgson of Drumburgh Farm – she waylaid me with the idea, and she persisted, she didn’t give up! Jean Graham was another great advocate for the idea.’

The unusual land- and sea-scape of this small corner of England that is tucked in next to the Solway Firth and the border with Scotland was sure to have imprinted unusual stories in the minds of those people who have lived here, in some cases for as long as 90 years.

So, more than three years ago, there was a meeting in the Methodist Chapel at Port Carlisle to make plans and, Naomi said, “We knew we had the foundations of a good project.”

They brought in Susan Child from Creative Horizons, an expert in oral and community history, and she trained the nine volunteers in how to gather oral history, how to do the recordings – and, importantly, in the ethics of carrying out recordings.

As Sarah Hodgson said at one of the planning meetings at the Chapel, “Interviewees need security, they need to know we’re not going to be rummaging through their belongings. Many of them are in their eighties or nineties and we tiptoe round until we get the opportunity to record them, we can’t just plough in.”

There is so much information, so many memories, to gather and preserve. Naomi explained, at the celebration, “We knew we were time-limited, so we decided to concentrate on on the central and North areas of the Solway Plain, from Kirkbride up to Burgh and down to Cardurnock. And being able to use the chapel was great – it’s such a great community and historical asset.”

Port Carlisle chapel

A drop-in and update session in the chapel

I went to a couple of the planning and update meetings in the little white-washed room at the chapel, and ideas were flowing fast as to which topics needed still to be covered, who could be contacted and, hopefully, interviewed. There was a buzz of laughter and chatter over the coffee and biscuits. “The group had a huge amount of energy,” Naomi said.

Which of the many topics should they choose? Farming, peat-cutters, ferrymen, the WRENs who came in the War, the Anthorn Camp, the Shooting Range at Burgh, turf-cutting for (it was said) Wembley, the people who were in service, the Home Guard …?

The list was finally narrowed down to farming; the railways; peat-cutting; fishing; growing up; and the Solway itself.

The group held frequent Open Days throughout the two years so that everyone interested could come and meet their friends and hear how the project was developing. I went along on a mid-June afternoon in 2016. There were about twenty people crammed into the tiny room, as well as the recording volunteers. Cake and cups of tea were being handed out, and around the room were boards and tables with photos, scrap books, letters and several transcripts of recorded interviews; people were poring over them, exclaiming, pointing out friends or acquaintances in the photos, this sometimes leading on to suggestions for further interviewees. Susan Child was sitting in the corner feeding letters and photos into a scanner. After a while she put on her head-phones and we all settled down to hear one of the recordings, then Jean Graham, a local writer and poet as well as one of the volunteer interviewers, read three poems based on her interviews and her own experiences.

In the last year the pace has increased: there was the film to be made, the transcripts to write, the recordings to tidy up, the booklet to publish.

Naomi Hewitt (2nd left), and Susan Child (2nd right) with some of the peole who took part

Before the lunch

Jean Graham reads her poem ‘Black & White’ about hound-trailing

And finally, on July 14^th 2017, the end of the project was celebrated with a lunch at the White Heather Hotel, Kirkbride. More than 150 people came, and the room – and the lengthy queue for the buffet lunch – was echoing with conversations and laughter. As Jean told me, “Some of these people probably haven’t seen each other in years – they’re not always able to get about, they’ve been isolated on their farms …”

Tables around the room were piled with memorabilia such as farm implements, peat-cutting tools, kitchen equipment and school-books.

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(For more stories about peat-cutting on the Solway Mosses, the tools and techniques, see Ask the fellows who cut the peats.)

The celebration also included a showing of the film, made by Tony Wilkinson of Red Onion Video, and the ‘launch’ of the free booklet that includes extracts from some of the interviews.

In all, there have been 46 recorded interviews, involving 53 people (some of whom were unable to do a final recording through ill-health). Each person who had been recorded received a CD of their own interview to hand down to their families, and the written transcripts will be given to the Cumbria Archives at Carlisle.

‘It was an agonising task to choose clips for the film and for the book,’ Naomi said. ‘They’re very much tasters of the wider archive. And we know the archive will be preserved for generations, though the book and CD will have a shorter life.’

There were hints that future funding may be secured to continue the project: after all, there are still several important topics that have not been recorded, like hound-trailing, ferries, ‘HMS Nuthatch’ and so much more!

We all have stories to tell, some may be dull and repetitious but others are important in reminding us of how our attitudes have changed, and how we have changed the world around us.   Many of us will be wishing, far too late, that we had encouraged our own parents to record their memories in some way. Even though aural recording technologies change, the oral stories can still be captured using the simple technology of pen and paper.

 

 

Note: The transcripts will be donated to Carlisle Archive Centre by the end of 2017.

Susan Child talks about the delivery of the Remembering the Solway project, at the Solway Heritage Conference, Burgh-by-Sands 2017

‘Remembering the Solway’: the film, starring David Hume (peat-cutting on the Moss), Margaret Sharples (railways on the peat-moss), Geoff Hodgson (bird-nesting), Daphne Hogg (swimming at Port Carlisle), Allen Hodgson (farming and milking), Jean Graham (playing on the peat-moss)

Snippets 13: “A hare in a fix”

A hare in a fix (Carlisle Journal, February 4th 1881)

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 winter. If ‘social media’ had existed, this hare would have been the iconic image for that time.

 

***

The hare, although presented on a plate, is not still.

Legs scrabbling, eyes bulging,

she tests her sea-legs.

The ice-floe zig-zags across the watery border

between the lands,

buffeted by waves, spinning,

so that the hare no longer knows

which is Scotland or England

(if she ever did).

 

She is immersed in noise, the sound

of wind and rushing water;

ice groans and rasps

and iron squeals against iron.

Men’s arms point like guns,

and she flattens, black ear-tips

pressed into her soft back fur.

The floe thuds against dark pillars,

tilts, swings free.

The hare, shivering, splays her legs, and

pounds her feet against the unforgiving ice.

Then, body too cold to melt a hollow,

she squats, past fear.

 

But when the fast-ebbing tide wedges

the floe against a sandbank,

the hare opens her eyes.

Her back legs unfold and gently catapult her ashore

onto a cold, moist island lacking green.

Leaving the ghosts of foot-prints,

she scoops out a shallow form.

Safe.

Until the tide turns.

***

 

or:

 

A gull screeches in low, head tilting,

hoping for a meal in the huddle of fur.

The hare opens her eyes and watches its flight.

“Bugger this for a shit start to the year,”

she mutters.

And stretches.

“I’ll go where he’s going, thanks.”

Scrabbling aboard the beached floe,

she kicks off.

Her back legs unfold and catapult her afloat

as the slack tide turns

and pushes the ice-raft back upstream.

Gliding ashore on the Scottish side,

she slides off onto glistening mud,

leaving deep indented footprints.

“Och aye the noo,” she tries,

in her Cumberland accent,

and she staggers stickily upwards

towards the green edgeland.

***

The explanation of why there were ice-floes on the Solway Firth and why the hare heard the noise of iron squealing against iron, is in Chapter 10 of Crossing the Moss – the intriguing Victorian and present-day story of the raised mire or ‘Moss’ of Bowness Common and the Solway Junction railway.

This was a project in which photographer James Smith and I collaborated, with support from the Solway Wetlands Landscape Partnership (to whom, needless to say, we are very grateful!).

The mental image of the hare on the ice-floe was too good to waste (and why she found herself there, in deep winter, raises many questions with regard to extreme cold, hibernation, food and foraging).

If, like me, you have had enough of sad and disturbing news, choose the alternative ending …