Cumbria: Allonby to Grune Point 22/6/2005****

 

Hoary mugwort   London-pride   Clustered bellflower garden var.

Today the morning was overcast and windy enough to take our hats off; the afternoon was sunny and windy enough to take our heads off!  The walk was straightforward, however, and at least the wind was behind us all the way.  Parking at Allonby opposite the bus-stop we soon found Isle of Man cabbage in the sandy grass and scrub at the head of the beach and this plant was common all day.  Near the houses there were also introduced plants like maple-leaved goosefoot, London-pride, red opium poppy, a large garden variety of clustered bellflower, and hoary mugwort.  We continued north close to the road through the same rough grass sandy environment, too degraded for any special dune plants.  At Dubmill Point the sea erosion had led to defence works of cement embankments and we were forced on to the road for a short while.  After this, however, was a wider space between road and sea of more degraded dune known as Mawbray Bank.  Here we encountered an artificial natterjack toad pond and saw one tadpole emerge for air from the murky depths.  There was also leafy rush Juncus foliosus.  On the beach, apart from the usual oystercatchers and ringed plovers noisily concerned that we might discover their nests among the shingle, we were pleased to see a pair of golden plover.  The sandy way became narrow again past Beckfoot, where a stream comes down as the name implies, but then widened again to provide room for a golf course and plenty of fore-dune for the path approaching the quiet little town of Silloth.  As with many towns along this coast we suddenly found ourselves at the central harbour without realising we were even coming into a settlement.  Here were boats and many factories.  Having walked round them we found the main street, still cobbled, parallel to the front.  All the streets were wide like a town in a Western.  We bought cakes at a café and ate them in a large grass park with an elementary crazy-golf course.  We were surprised by a distressed tawny owl swooping around the sky with its feet caught in something.  We walked across the park to the beach, marked by a concrete embankment for a kilometre or more, making easy walking but little to see except brown sea, sand being churned up from the bottom.  We carried on above groynes but there was no beach, it being high tide.  We soon found ourselves in the rather unpleasantly named Skinburness and continued along the beach-head behind houses, with more garden escapes, to the foot of Grune Spit.  We walked northwards along the saltmarsh side, but the grassland was pastured and uninteresting, with only distant views of shelduck.  Rounding the point was a bank of shells, all common species, and we wandered back along an inland track through farmland.  In one spot, where there had been a fire in the gorse the previous year, was a dense population of foxgloves, including plenty of the white variety.  We emerged on the beach again on the west side where we found the path had been washed away, perhaps in January’s storms, which had caused much damage around here.  (Of four B&Bs we phoned for accommodation in Carlisle, two were out of operation because of flooding and the others were full!)  We walked back to the road near Skinburness Hotel in time for the 4.15 bus back to Allonby (and more of their ice-cream!).  By the bus-stop lay a dead stoat.

Maple-leaved goosefoot         Silloth