Cark to Arnside – 2nd May 2022

Purple = planned route

Red = Cark to Kent Bank – route taken

After yesterday’s occasionally damp walk from Carnforth to Arnside we were looking forward to the drier weather promised for today, not least because we are switching to bike transport.  Bikes enable us to tick off the distances faster, as long as the terrain is largely flat.  Any significant hills however, will reverse this benefit – since we do not have well developed cycling muscles.  Mostly walkers are we.  

Back home we have just invested in a pair of e-bikes, but at £2000 a pop we are not confident about leaving them at the caravan during our walking days.  Further, some of the routes we end up taking by bike involve squeezing through kissing gates or lifting bikes over gates.  E-bikes weigh significantly more than our ordinary ones.  A further reason for not bringing them is that we frequently find ourselves cycling near or on beaches, where we suspect salt water or just salty air might be bad for the motor or the battery.  However, we may well switch to power assisted cycling at some stage in the future, as we race through our 60s.  

Personally I prefer walking, since it affords us the opportunity to look more closely at the landscape and natural history that we pass through.  That doesn’t apply to city sections of the coast, or where the landscape is flat and unchanging for long periods of time.  For these sections cycling will do us just nicely.  There are no rules that apply to our adventures, just preferences – especially going to places where we can enjoy a degree of isolation and avoidance of noisy or busy places.  This particularly applies to A roads and even B roads, explaining why we sometimes take our bikes down tracks, footpaths and across beaches where no sensible cyclist would venture.

The plan today is to park at Cark (has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?).  Cark is the most westerly settlement of the peninsula which lies between between the estuaries of the Rivers Kent and Leven.  A footpath runs close to the actual shoreline between Cark and Lakeland Leisure Park to the south, which would be worth trying on foot, but not by bike.  Chances are we would be throwing our bikes over 5-barred gates every quarter mile.  So for cycling purposes we are treating Cark as the end point of the day’s westward cycle from Arnside, where we intend to start today (and where we finished yesterday’s leg), once we have caught the train to Arnside.

The route from Arnside is largely flat and avoids major roads for most of the time.  With any luck we might even be able to cycle down Grange-over-Sands’ Promenade, although I have yet to determine if this is permitted.

Cark – pure pedal-power only – on my old mountainbike

On arriving at Cark station we realise that we have a 30 minute wait before the train arrives.This is a poor way to start an adventure, when you are chomping at the bit to get started, so I suggest that we cycle to Kents Bank station – only a couple of miles away by quiet country roads.  Betty, as ever, is game for this and we make excellent progress along quiet minor roads as far as Allithwaite.  Sadly I fail to clock on the map, the rather steep hill waiting for us at Allithwaite, which adds a few extra minutes to our journey.  During the time spent pushing the bike up the steep hill my thoughts turn to alternatives.

At Kents Bank we just have time to board the train, but the alternative of cycling in the opposite direction to that planned has now become more attractive, so we decide to just keep on cycling to Arnside and catch the train back from there at the end of the day.

The question over whether we are allowed to cycle along Grange-over-Sands Promenade now comes to the fore.  To get to the southern end of the Promenade we need to follow a footpath from Kentsford Road, lugging our bikes down a long flight of steps in the process.  At the bottom, a narrow concrete path takes us between the railway and the backs of some houses.  It is not a bad cycle ride, although there is little clearance between hedges and handlebars as we pedal along. We encounter only two pedestrians coming from the other direction.  Being polite cyclists, we of-course dismount to let them pass us, apologising profusely for any inconvenience caused.

Eventually the footpath opens-out into Cart Lane, a local street, where cycling becomes a lot more straight-forward.  At the end of Cart Lane we catch-up with another cyclist, one of those intrepid pioneers convinced that cycling in a horizontal position is preferrable.  I suspect the ergonomics may work in their favour, but one of my greatest loves of vertical cycling is the elevated position it affords, as opposed to lying on my back.  Our fellow horizontal cyclist has 2 rear wheels, which would make following footpaths much trickier and getting-through kissing gates nigh-on impossible.  He certainly couldn’t have negotiated the footpath and steps we just encountered.  

From the back of his bike he has an enormous yellow flag flying from a pole.  I guess this is to advertise his presence to other road-users, although it might conceivably be utilised as a sail, should he find a brisk wind in his favour.  At the end of Cart Lane a broad tarmac path takes us between some sports fields and the railway line.   I am encouraged by these developments, especially as our fellow cyclist appears to be very confident about his right to be cycling here.  No signs say otherwise, so I just fall-in behind him.

The path dives under the railway line by way of a narrow underpass, which our three-wheeled vanguard negotiates with aplomb.  Obeying the signs here, Betty and I dismount, but are delighted to find our exit opens-out onto The Promenade along-which all manner of ‘unpowered’ vehicles are moving, including ourselves, the horizontal cyclist, scooters, electric chairs, prams and even other vertical pedlars.  I’m not the least bit surprised by this development, with the pandemic in part responsible for stimulating a more tolerant attitude towards cycling by local authorities.

“The ‘beach’ at Grange-over-Sands from The Promenade (Silverdale AONB can be seen across the Kent estuary)

Betty enjoys a gentle pedal along The Promenade, shared with pedestrians

Our gentle cycle along the Promenade in the May sunshine is most pleasant as we pass groups of pedestrians and other ‘prom-users’ having a day-out at the seaside.  I am a little uncertain about the etiquette in this brave new world of mixed cyclists and walkers, despite having had a not-disimilar and potentially incendury combination in Hastings for many years.  In Hastings white lines mark the cycle lane, but most pedestrians ignore this and walk at random risking collisions with speeding cyclists.  I suspect demarkation is a mistake and actually encourages cyclists to assume they have the right to travel at speed.  

No demarcation exists here however, so I travel at little more than walking pace, carefully avoiding groups of pedestrians.  I am tempted to ring my bell, but this always smacks of car-honking motorists venting their spleens at all and sundry.  One old lady does complain to Betty about me not using my bell as I go past.  Inevitably you can’t please everyone, but her-aside, no-one seems the least put-out by our incursion into ‘pedestrian land’, with humans and various forms of mechanical propulsion coexisting in near-perfect harmony.

Grange-over-Sands was a small fishing village until the 1820s, when tourists started to visit.  Up until the 1850s the ‘Cross Bay Walk’ was the only direct footway between Lancashire (Hest Bank) and Grange-over-Sands.  Indeed, even horse-drawn carriages used this potentially treacherous route across the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay.  To this day it is possible to use this route, although it would be foolhardy to do-so without a local guide.  In 1857 the ‘Cross Bay Walk’ all-but fell into disuse with the coming of the railways and from then onwards tourism flourished – as it also did at Arnside on the opposite bank of the Estuary.

Old postcards reveal that there was indeed plenty of sand at Grange.  However, today it would more correctly be named Grange-over-Saltmarsh, since changes in sedimentation have led to gentler water conditions in which deposition of fine muds predominates.  Mud inevitably leads to salt marsh – in the upper tidal range at least.  

Last September we visited Hoylake, on The Wirral Peninsula near Liverpool.  Here, a number of locals were decrying the demise of their beach as it too transitioned to salt marsh.  With changing attitudes to the environment, I suspect it won’t be long before people value salt marsh vegetation more than sand, especially as it plays such an important role in the sequestering of carbon and the protection of wildlife.  Ironically, when we visited the beach at Blackpool last September, there were few people using it – so perhaps the popularity of sand is already diminishing.

Grange-over-Saltmarsh

Droves of holiday-makers would have visited the sands that existed here 100 years ago.  Sandcastles have now been replaced with binoculars.

At the end of the ‘prom’ we have to dismount and climb a steep ramp which takes us back over the railway to join the B5277.  The horizontal cyclist has by now climbed off his contraption and joined a group of friends at a cafe.  I’d love to see how he copes with the ramp and whether he can take it in his literally ‘laid-back’ style, but we have challenges of our own ahead.

The sea and the railway brought beach holidays to Grange-over-Sands.  What the sea gives, the sea taketh away

We are snapped back into reality by the noise of engines and tyres as we watch the river of cars flowing past us along the B5277.  Instead of launching ourselves into the maelstrom, we chicken-out – finding a gentler route along the rudimentary pavement on our side of the road.  In fact we only need to tolerate this grating intrusion into our sensibilities for about 400 metres, before we are able to turn right once again into one of those nice little roads coloured in yellow on the OS 1:25,000 scale map.  

The contrast between Meathop Road and the B5277 is palpable as we glide noiselessly and serenely down a short slope onto level ground that would at one time have been a bay of the Kent Estuary.  

Here a modestly proportioned area of wetland is sandwiched between road and railway.  It is alive with bird song and wetland plants.  

*Note: Meathop is apparently derived from an enclosed area of middle marsh land – as are midhopp, midhope, mythop and middope.

An area of wetland on Meathop Road given-over to wildlife

Kent Estuary

Arnside to Kent Estuary

Enjoying the tranquility of Meathop Road, we once again glide over the smooth tarmac enjoying the warm May sunshine.  Noticing a mother and her large family bathing in an adjacent stream, we dismount and watch them for a minute.  They are a female mallard and her offspring, and like the old woman who lived in a shoe – she had so many children that she didn’t know what to do.

Mrs Mallard and her 13 ducklings hunt flies on the water surface.

However, not everything in the landscape here would match most people’s aesthetic tastes.  The rich soil of the lowland provides excellent growing conditions for arable crops.  A not-uncommon development amongst farmers in general is the cloaking of their fields in sheets of clear plastic.  This is designed to warm the soil and reduce frost risk, thereby extending the growing season.  How sustainable this plastic sheeting is, raises a different question.  Some of the plastic mulch available is biodegradable, but I suspect the majority of that used by agriculture still ends-up in landfills.

Clear plastic ‘mulch’ adorns the fields of Meathop.  How much of this is sustainable?

In the middle of this lowland is one of the many strange tree-clad islands that once emerged from the sea in Southern Cumbria.  These would have been formed when ice sheets/glaciers carved away softer rocks as they extended south during the ice ages.  It is notable how they tend to be aligned in a north-south direction parallel to the direction of ice flow.  One of these is Meathop Fell, a ‘bump’ in the Meathop Marshes, now covered in trees.

Meathop Fell.  A glacial ‘left-over’ providing an island of trees in a dull, flat, arable landscape

Whilst Betty and I like the hills of Cumbria, this aesthetic judgement is contradicted by our legs, which invariably prefer flat land.  The road climbs over one side of Meathop Fell, taking us through some excellent bluebell woods before rewarding us with a pleasant downhill on the far side.

Blue bell woods cover Meathop Fell

Jack-by-the-hedge and bluebell line either side of a moss covered dry-stone wall on Meathop Fell

From here a quiet country lane takes us across Meathop Marshes to Ulpha Fell (another former island) before joining the A 590 at Longhowe End.  An underpass takes us beneath the A590 where our journey continues along the old road to Levens.  However, our route is now ‘blocked’ by The Derby Inn, which we are forced to visit for a half of cider to drink outside with our packed lunches.

The old road to Levens runs alongside a towering precipice rising to the north.  This is Whit-barrow Scar which is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).  This Carboniferous Limestone edifice rises abruptly from sea level to over 200 metres, being renowned not only for its impressive views of the Lakeland fells and Morecambe Bay, but for the rare wildlife sheltered amongst its limestone pavement.  National rarities such as blue moor-grass, dark red helleborine, lesser meadow rue and four species of fritillary butterflies.  It goes into my book as a place to visit at some future opportunity.

I realise that our Legging Round Britain expedition has to be a compromise between quality and quantity.  Cycling favours the quantity, or should I say the amount of landscape-level countryside experienced, at the expense of looking in detail at individual habitats.  Nonetheless, covering perhaps twice the distance in a day does make one aware of places to visit at a later date and spend quality time in them.  The UK has so many of them – and that’s just on the coast!

Whit-barrow Scar – a Carboniferous Limestone Nature Reserve now on my list of places to visit

The old road to Levens wobbles along the former coastline in marked contrast to its successor, the A590, which cuts an arrow-like gash across the countryside.  This is the main arterial road connecting the M6 to the southern Lake District and carries large amounts of traffic headed for the southern end of Lake Windermere and Coniston Water, as well as along the south coast to Barrow-in-Furness.

We pass scores of cyclists along this road, probably doing the reverse journey to us, before catching the train back to Arnside.  The road diverts through Levens, a climb of some 40 metres, before we sweep down to join the A6 where it meets the A590.  Thankfully the M6 and  A590 take most of the traffic that would otherwise come streaming north up the A6.  Nonetheless, we take the first detour opportunity that comes our way, through the village of Eversley.  From here a minor road enables us to avoid further A6 cycling, enabling us to bypass both Heversham and Milnthorpe.

We are now on the B5282 to Arnside which does carry a significant amount of traffic.  Fortunately the pavement is ok to cycle, giving some degree of relief from the passing cars.  Even so, I am glad to take a detour into the village of Sandside, before returning to the B5282, 400 metres further along.  The powers-that-be have missed a trick here, since an old railway line exists.  Currently, cyclists are forbidden from following this route, which would take them along the former railway embankment sandwiched between the road and the estuary.  It is available to walkers, so we just need greater enlightenment amongst those with the power.

At Sandside I notice how many of the local walls are decorated with chunks of limestone pavement.  This includes one house having two lumps over 2 metres long, for gate posts.  Hopefully this practice is no longer taking place, since limestone pavements and their rare wildlife are very much under threat.

Chunks of ‘decorative’ limestone pavement adorn a garden wall at Sandside

We continue along the B5282 and 2 miles further we arrive at Arnside Station, where our train back to Cark will not be along for 45 minutes.  A perfect excuse to have a coffee at The Wayside Cafe opposite.  They are just closing, but are happy for us to sit and drink our coffee on a bench out-front, whilst they clean-up.  

The Wayside Cafe – the sort of establishment needed at the end of a hard day’s cycling

We have enough time to cycle into Arnside again, before returning for our train home.  I don’t know if it is good luck or bad, but I somehow pick-up a puncture just before getting on the train.  I suppose it could have happened earlier.

The train whisks us across the Kent Viaduct to the far bank in a couple of minutes.  In the 1850’s the speed of train travel must have been mind-blowing for people who previously had to walk or travel by coach along the route we have cycled today.  The views across the estuary are impressive, if fleeting, before the train whisks us past Grange-over-Sands and Kents Bank before we disembark at Cark.  

The Kent Viaduct cut the estuary crossing time from hours to minutes in 1857

Arnside and the Kent Estuary from a speeding train on the Kent Viaduct.  A scene little changed since 1857

I push the punctured bike the last quarter-mile back to the car and we head for home.  Driving with all the other traffic on the A590 we are now in car mode – protected from other users by seat belts, air bags and crumple-zones.  Outside Ulverstone the traffic slows.  A cyclist has fallen off his bike.  I join others to see what help I can offer, but he is being well looked-after by an ex-ambulance driver.  Nonetheless, the incident quickly reminds me how vulnerable we are as cyclists on any busy road.  The route we take is invariably circuitous and can involve having to push our bikes or even pass them over gates, but at least it is relatively safe.  The sooner we can create more safe-cycling routes around the UK, the better.

Not the last puncture I was to suffer during our expedition around the Cumbrian Coast