Carnforth to Arnside – 1st May 2022

It is May 2022 and I have been planning this spring’s ‘expedition’ for several months. As usual, Betty leaves the route planning to me, whilst she takes charge of quarter-master duties. She always likes each day of ‘legging’ to be a surprise and I likewise appreciate her cooking. In fact the first day of the expedition was planned last summer in anticipation of completing it at the end of our Lancashire Coast bike ride. As usual it didn’t quite work out – not enough time I guess.
So the first day of Cumbria 2022 starts in Lancashire, at Carnforth and involves walking the northern part of Lancashire Coast Way from the station where ‘Brief Encounter’ was shot in 1945, to Arnside in Cumbria.
Of course our expedition began a day before this, with us driving up from East Sussex accompanied by our rather small caravan, towed by Betty’s new motor – a DS7 Crossback (in essence a posh Citroen). Arriving at our caravan site shortly before dark, we barely had time to sort out our caravan awning before getting to bed.

Next morning, after a night of heavy rainfall, we discover the awning leaks. It is not alone, since so does the roof-lite in our shower room. Not a good omen for our first day. It being a walking day, we don’t need our bikes or our new tow-ball mounted bike rack. 45 minutes later we arrive at Arnside and park Betty’s new pride and joy on the roadside not far from the station. It is a Sunday and there is no charge and no time restriction – a perfect combination. The train arrives at 10.29am, but from the opposite direction to that expected. I have a moment of panic, before realising it is me who is disorientated, not the driver.
The train is reasonably busy, with the majority of passengers apparently headed for Lancaster, with a few alighting at Silverdale to visit the RSPB reserve. The Arnside and Silverdale AONB looks like the kind of place to spend a week walking the hills and mosses (bogs to you and me) to enjoy the splendid views and witness some fascinating wildlife. In reality it is an extension of the Lake District, being largely made up of Carboniferous Limestone, similar to the geology a few miles away around Grange-over-Sands – two miles across the estuary of the River Kent.
The train gives us only a fleeting glimpse of what we will be missing further inland, since our endeavours today will be largely coastal in their range. By 11am we are standing on the platform at Carnforth, like a pair of latter-day ‘Brief Encounter’ lovers. We were last here in September, when the cafe and museum were shut, so we take the opportunity of looking round, taking photographs and using the toilet facilities. The ambiance is pleasant and the toilets are acceptable, but the day is in danger of slipping-by and we have 12 miles of coastal walking to complete.

The small museum captures the ambiance of 1945

So saddling-up shanks’ pony we set off at an enthusiastic pace down Warton Road and then in Shore Road which runs alongside the tidal River Keer. A footbridge and footpath take us to Sand Lane where we are surprised to find large numbers of SUVs heading towards the Morecambe Bay salt marshes. A poster reveals that the PA system we can hear is busily welcoming spectators to a stock car racing event. Instead we head towards the nearby village of Warton, taking a footpath north towards Warton Crags.

Footbridge across the River Keer

“Turned out nice!” I declare to a couple of passing dog walkers as the heavens start to pour the wet stuff down on us.
They grin at Betty and I with our backpacks and repost with. “We’re off inside. Watch-out for the slippery mud up there.”
The mud we can cope with, whilst the light, although steady drizzle gives greater cause for concern. We have brought ponchos with us, but I keep faith with the new Cag I’m wearing.

Drizzly climb up a muddy path to Warton Crag

The footpath lets us out onto Crag Road where a sweating 60-something lady runner comes trotting past us. I exchange a nod, realising that she will not be in conversational mood. As the runner disappears down the road Betty whispers one of her gems of wisdom. “She needs a sports bra, otherwise she’ll be tripping over herself before too long.”
We start to notice large limestone boulders adjacent to the road, perhaps unwanted by the quarrymen who hewed great lumps of the stuff from the quarry face. The now disused Warton Crag and Scout Crag Quarries are important nature reserves, hosting rarities such as Pale St. John’s-wort and Angular Solomon’s-seal, neither of which I am familiar with – but we have no time to investigate them today. I do spot a few specimens of Early Purple Orchid by the roadside, but the
more interesting orchids found on limey soils won’t show themselves for a few weeks yet.

“Early Purple Orchid on the verge near Scout Crag Quarry.”

Eventually Crag Road returns us to the lowlands at Crag Foot and Leighton Moss Nature Reserve where the vista is dominated by water and reed beds. At this time of year the new reed has yet to show itself. When it does the moss will be transformed from browns to greens and the air will be alive with the angry call of reed warblers.

Leighton Moss in its winter browns

The Lancashire Coast Way takes us under the railway before leaving us waymarkless in the middle of grazing marsh at Quaker’s Stang. As the rain increases in intensity, Betty dons her poncho and I put my map into its waterproof cover. We are suddenly surrounded by frisky bullocks bellowing to their neighbours across the field. Aware that Betty is normally a little uncertain around bovids, I feel a metaphorical perfect storm brewing (weather, absence of waymarkers, frisky bullocks) and a degree of panic overtakes me. Which way? I suddenly realise what a Quaker’s Stang is and I am caught in its grasp. This is when the curse of a paper-based map inside a waterproof cover comes to the fore. The fold in the map means that I have to flip the whole ensemble back and forth to get a fix on where we are and where we want to go. To cap it all the bullocks on the far side of the field start bellowing and heading in our direction. I’m convinced we are about to be caught in a pincer movement and decide to head north-west, rather than west (from where they are ‘attacking’). Its a ridiculously fraught few minutes as we stagger around looking for some sort of clue as to where we are. Somehow we pick
up a footpath that joins the one we missed and all is well again. Except for a smug Betty, who lets it be known that she had pointed-out the right direction in the first place.

The (unmarked) Lancashire Coast Way across Quakers Stang that Betty says we should have followed

The route is now more obvious, between the cliffs and the salt marsh (although Lancashire Coastal Way tries to complicate things by providing an alternative route over Heald Brow – I assume for when the tide is high). We are not in the clear yet though, as the already high tide is still rising. Further, the rain is gets heavier and the smooth rocks we have to clamber over threaten us with broken limbs.

Ponchoed Betty steps gingerly over slipper limestone near Brown’s Houses

Beyond the slippery rocks an area of grazed salt marsh is sandwiched between the cliffs and the rising tide. I am overtaken by environmental ecstasy and record 3 minutes of video footage, waxing lyrical about the inexorable rise of the tide, an interesting industrial chimney and the Carboniferous Limestone geology. The chimney is most probably all that remains of a failed copper mining and smelting enterprise set up in the 18th Century at Brown’s Houses.

Beyond the slippery rocks at Brown’s Houses we breath a sigh of relief, having cheated the rising tide of two more victims of wet feet.

We have one last scramble over rocks, clinging onto the boundary wall of a house whose owners insist walkers are not permitted to cut through their garden – even at high tide! Someone has kindly provided a life ring for any unfortunates forced to take the intertidal scramble.

Last slippery climb around the garden wall of a cottage at Brown’s Houses

From here-on the path is much easier, following a tarmac road past an abandoned limestone quarry and several groups of people who have evidently decided to take the circular walk along the Lancashire Coastal Way from Silverdale.
“Watch out for the slippery rocks and rising tide.” I warn the first group. They thank me in accents that sound Eastern European in origin.
Later groups likewise appear to be of Eastern European extraction – judging by their language and I wonder if perhaps they are Ukrainian refugees being housed locally. However, on reaching Silverdale village I realise that it is a bit of a tourist honeypot and they are most likely European
holiday-makers.
The Silverdale Hotel provides us with an excuse to partake of a half of cider to accompany our packed lunch. Despite the rain, we are able to sit outside under a shelter, chatting to a couple with a three-legged dog. The conversation is one of those pleasant chats that you find yourself having
with total strangers drawn together by serendipity.
Duly fortified we amble down to the beach area, where a car park has been set-up on the beach. I wonder who draws the income from this venture since I always assumed that The Queen owned everything between high and low tide marks. Not-so it seems.

The beach car park at Silverdale.
Between Silverdale and Elmslack the retreating tide has left a veneer of mud for us to pick our way through. We quickly gain on a couple of young lads who are attempting the walk in trainers. I can’t resist commenting to one of them. “Seemed like a good idea when you started!” He sportingly acknowledges my remark with a grin, before he and his mate climb the cliffs to investigate a limestone cave in the cliffs at Red Rake. This is the end of the Lancashire Coastal Walk. As we stagger out of the mud I notice that other walkers have taken an undesignated alternative footpath along the cliff top, avoiding all the mud. I wonder if the coast path’s architect disappeared in the mud here and was therefore unable to suggest the alternative route.

“Two walkers negotiate the Red Rake mud in trainers”

“Betty negotiates the mud at Red Rake.”

“A cliff cave near Red Rake and Looking back from Red Rake to Silverdale”

Into Cumbria at last. They evidently didn’t get the memo about the creation of the England Coast Path, which goes undesignated between here and Arnside, but at least the weather has taken a turn for the better. A man and his dog ask me if it is alright to park in the cove at Red Rake (I evidently have an air of authority that attracts such enquiries). I have to confess that I have no idea, although there is nothing to say otherwise. Nonetheless I can understand his concern – to go for a walk with your dog and find your vehicle has been impounded by an irate landowner.
The road from Red Rake takes us to Elmslack, where a footpath takes us through a holiday caravan site at Middlebarrow Plain and on to an even posher holiday chalet park at Far Arnside. Beyond Far Arnside it is anyone’s guess which of the many footpaths to take through the woods. In the end we make the wrong choice and head downhill, only to have to climb back up the hill again to a more obvious path. The lower path does however give excellent views back along the Lancashire coast.
The woodland at Arnside Park is mostly wind-grazed oak, with some pines. The ground vegetation confuses me a little, since large amounts of heather grow beneath the trees – a plant of acidic soils. However, the local geology is limestone, giving alkaline soils. It could be that a layer of glacial till or other drift material covers the limestone bedrock. I discover Lily of the Valley, a plant I have hardly ever seen in the wild and never in such profusion as here.
The woods are quite extensive and beautiful to walk through. A couple of caves suddenly appear to our right, going several metres into the hillside. The limestone here is quite pink in colour and probably iron stained, suggesting the caves might have arisen from some exploratory mining at some stage in their past. They don’t go very deep, so probably any digging came to naught.

“Lily of the Valley at Far Arnside”

“Two ‘hobbit-holes’ in the rather pink limestone of Arnside Park.”

Further along, at Frith Wood, the footpath splits and we elect to take the left-hand one, leading down to the shoreline between Arnside Point and Blackstone Point (White Creek on some maps). The cliffs here are relatively low, perhaps 5-10 metres high. I am intrigued to know what the sedimentation history of this bay is since it has salt marsh juxtaposed with a pebble storm beach. These are unlikely bedfellows since salt marsh is the result of a low energy wave environment and a storm beach (as its name suggests) is the result of high energy waves.
My guess is that until some years ago, the shoreline here was subjected to heavy wave action, creating steep cliffs and caves at both headlands and an accumulation of large pebbles into a high level storm beach in-between. These pebbles would have been deposited by the largest of the waves generated by the prevailing winds blowing from the south west, across the Irish Sea. The storm over, few if any subsequent waves would have had the reach or power to return the pebbles back down the beach (in January this year we visited Bossington Beach, Somerset where a similar, but much larger storm beach exists).
With waves sufficiently powerful to create the storm beach, it is likely that salt marsh plants and the fine mud that held their roots would have been eroded away. However, today salt marsh borders the lower edge of the storm beach suggesting that few, if any, powerful waves carry out their work on this shoreline. Why the change in sedimentation? It may have something to do with changes to prevailing wind direction (climate change?), or possibly the supply of sediment brought down by the River Kent. Then again the vast expanse of sand and mud that covers the adjacent Morecambe Bay could have some bearing. Human interference may also have had a direct or indirect effect eg. The building of the railway embankment across the Kent Viaduct.

“Salt marsh at White Creek near Blackstone Point, with The Lake District beyond”

“Blackstone Point, with the salt marsh and storm beach of White Creek in the foreground.”

Limestone geology and vegetation has always fascinated me. I am delighted to identify Whitebeam growing on the cliffs here, which is far less common in the south of England.

Whitebeam growing on the White Creek cliffs

Close-ups of Whitebeam coming into leaf

“The storm beach at White Creek Bay”

At Blackstone Point the coast turns north east towards Arnside. Here we find sea pink and birdsfoot trefoil amongst the limestone rocks – every gardeners dream as to how an authentic rockery should appear. In the more sheltered waters of the Kent estuary, trees come right down to the high tide mark, with elm being particularly evident. Elms are a rare sight in southern England, but up here in the north west they grow beyond the normal range of the elm bark beetle that spreads the fungal pathogen that has killed so many of their southern counterparts. This of course may all change one day as a warming UK climate extends the beetle’s range northward.
At New Barns we encounter further salt marsh and make the mistake of trying to short-cut across it. Deep creeks block our path and we are forced inland. The higher areas of salt marsh are home to sea plantain, which grows in a ring not unlike a monk’s tonsure, whilst in the creeks scurvy grass grows.

“The perfect rock garden – birdsfoot trefoil and sea pink (Thrift) set in limestone bedrock”

“Elm tree bearing fruit and fresh green leaves”

“Sea Plantain takes on a ‘monk’s tonsure’ habit of growth”
“Scurvy grass grows at the head of one of the salt marsh creek”

We pause to examine the exposure of Carboniferous Limestone just south west of Ash Meadow, which exhibits a ‘cut-away’ section of the bedding planes and the folding that would have taken place during the Variscan Orogeny (mountain-building period) shortly after being deposited in a warm, shallow Carboniferous sea.

“Carboniferous limestone exposure near Ash Meadow”

“The Variscan folding is more evident in this wider angle shot”

Arnside is close, with multitudes of tourist streaming towards us along the recently exposed shoreline. A permanent concrete ‘promenade’ makes walking easier, which eventually feeds into The Promenade proper, with its large stone-built Victorian houses and long gardens indicate how popular the town became in the 19th Century, especially after the railway arrived in the 1850s.
A stone pier was built by the railway company to accommodate the sea-bourne traffic that could no longer reach Milnthorpe upstream, due to the construction of the viaduct that carried the line across the River Kent. This pier was destroyed by a storm in 1934, but was rebuilt by the railway company. This event illustrates how powerful storm-driven waves can be in what appears to be a relatively sheltered estuary.
Our observations at White Creek Bay, regarding changes in sedimentation history, are echoed at Arnside. In the 19th Century the town thrived as a seaside resort to rival Grange-over-Sands. I suspect the beach was sandy at that time, with the slimy-mud that coats it today probably the result of the building of the Kent Viaduct, as well as other major changes to the coastline caused by man.

“Arnside Pier – rebuilt in 1934”

“Kent Viaduct built to take the railway across the Kent Estuary in the 1950s”

“Arnside ‘seafront’, with beach and The Promenade.”

We celebrate the first leg of our Cumbrian coastal adventure with an ice cream before walking down towards the station where Betty is relieved that her ‘pride and joy’ is unscratched.

Tomorrow we switch ‘shank’s pony’ for our bikes, returning to Arnside for the next leg to Grangeover Sands on the far side of the Kent estuary.