Seek local guidance.” And if you Google “Across Morecambe Bay”, you learn that it is feasible to take a
seabed stroll only in the company of an official guide on an organised expedition.
Every 12 hours and 25 minutes, the moon’s gravity drags the water from Morecambe Bay. But the tides and
the terrain that lies exposed can be perilous. In 2004, 23 Chinese cockle-pickers drowned in the bay when
they were cut off by rising tides. The tragedy showed the risks of venturing out on to the sands without a
local expert.
For 56 years until this summer, that meant Cedric Robinson. He had left school at 14 to work with his father
on the bay.
Guiding spirit: Cedric Robinson, who spent 56
years keeping travellers safe across the bay
(Gary Rycroft)“I went fishing with a horse and cart, cockling, musselling, setting the nets,” he told me.
In 1963, The Beatles became famous, and Cedric became the Queen’s Guide to the Sands.
He dined with his employer three times. “She’s lovely, she took a liking to me. Prince Philip was a bit
jealous.” But with Cedric on hand, the Duke of Edinburgh once drove a carriage across the sands.
For a safe barefoot journey from Lancashire to Cumbria, I signed up for the sight loss charity, Galloway’s.
Around 400 of us enrolled; the maximum is a mammoth 450. We met at 11am on Saturday at the bayside
village of Arnside, where each of us was given a bright yellow T-shirt to make herding more manageable.
A serious adventure needs a serious base camp, and the Posh Sardine proved ideal. The “Vintage Tearoom
and Giftshop” dispenses homemade scones and coffee that matches exactly the shade of mud out in the bay
when it empties.
For centuries, Morecambe Bay provided the transport link from “mainland” Lancashire to a detached part
of the county: North Lonsdale, at the foot of what is now Cumbria. Until the railway opened in 1857, mail
coaches ran across the sands.
“Sands” is appropriate for some of the terrain exposed by the action of the moon’s gravity: a hard-packed
surface that you could land a Jumbo jet upon. But more of the surface is made of mud, sculpted by the tide
into a strangely lunar landscape. That moon again.