13th August 2024

The Solway estuary

An early morning walk along the Solway shore; the early sun, already warm. Soft air dotted and streaked with the piping of wading birds – mainly oyster catchers, but also curlew and the beautiful, diminutive,  ringed plover. The sand, rippled by the recent tide, is studied with thousands of cockle shells. 

This estuarine coast, with what, writing about a different estuary, Dylan Thomas described as its ‘visiting sea’, is very different from the rocky coast of north Pembrokeshire that I am used to. The sand here is muddy, oozy and rich. Where I am standing it presents a star field of worm castes, and I feel an echo of the unease these coiled masses used to evoke in me when, as a squeamish, bare-footed child, I used to plot courses between them as if they were mines. 

The morning is calm, with a bucolic feel, but a number of deep sea-sculpted holes in nearby rocks, reminds me that this can be a wild and harsh environment.  I imagine, in the winter maybe, when the geese are here, a storm funnelling up the estuary causing a two metre swell on top of the usual ten metre tide. As  the push of salt water meets the downrush of the fresh, the denser salt water cuts under and superimposes a wall of turbulence on the already powerful tidal flow. Such currents redistribute vast quantities of sand and silt and shuffle and re-shuffle, the ever changing banks and channels. 

But not today. Today is gentle.  I walk a little further before the lure of coffee and a bacon sandwich overwhelm my curiosity.