My second walk this afternoon ran the opposite way to the first one. There was a reason, I had an appointment at the far end, so the family came with me and then dropped me off at the Hest Bank end on their way home. I’d checked the weather forecast and wanted to walk today, the forecast seemed good, so I took the opportunity.

I might have checked the weather, I might know how ‘interesting’ our weather can be, but I hadn’t quite realised how cold, and how warm it was. At the start, the wind was coming in from the sea and was biting. Then it tried to hail and I began to wonder if I had chosen the right day for the second walk after all. However, the sun chased the hail away before it got going and soon I was left wanting half a hat. I was walking with my right side being hit by the arctic wind and asking for a wooly hat, and my left side being hit by the brilliant sunshine and asking for a fan!

Morecambe Bay can be like that, and looking across the bay I could see how gorgeously clear it was in some places, but how low the cloud was in others. In fact, the cloud got very dark at some points and was obscuring Grange-Over-Sands and then Ulverston for a while. As I walked down one side of the bay, the cloud seemed to head in the same direction on the opposite side. I headed from the Midland to the Battery wondering if it was going to cycle around the mouth of the bay and reach Heysham before I did. I was fortunate though, in that instead of coming around as it often can, the dark clouds moved out to sea.

Of course, the Bay is renowned for the speed of its tides. The incoming tide can be very dangerous, coming at speed, and with the proliferation of sandbanks and quicksand, it is not unusual for people to be caught unawares and to need rescue, even close to shore. On the western end of the prom, between the Battery and Whinnysty Lane, there are a lot of roundels, mainly giving the history of the sea defences, the piers we once had, and the prom itself. However, there are also two that compare Morecambe Bay to Niagara Falls. One tells us that we would need the same amount of water as 40 Niagara Falls to fill a single spring tide (Normally the highest of the year) in the bay. The other is similar and informs us that it would take 10 days for the volume of water in a single spring tide in Morecambe Bay to flow over Niagara Falls. Morecambe Bay is not just a little cove, a corner of the land, but is the largest intertidal area of mudflats and sand in the UK and although we often think of it as being part estuary, it is in fact estuary to 4 rivers, the Lune, Keer, Levens, and Kent or even 5 including the Wyre, depending on where you draw the boundaries. One side is always put at Walney Island, but at our end I’ve seen Heysham and Fleetwood mentioned, although I think looking at the map Fleetwood makes the more sensible line to draw.

I thought that I’d taken different lines around the wider parts of the prom today, and expected to have some variation in time and distance. However, the distance and time today were almost exactly what they were on my first walk. An hour and 40 minutes, and 4.68 miles. After some thought, and finding that it isn’t taking me as long to walk as I had expected, I have decided to increase the challenge. Instead of trying to complete the 20 walks in the rest of the year, I have decided to push to complete them in 20 weeks from the date of the first walk, which was Monday 21st March and that will give me until Monday 1st August. Given that we have a holiday in Skye for a week during that time, and I have several shorter times away, plus weather and fitness, etc this will mean sometimes doing the walk more than once a week and that will be a much bigger challenge. It does fit though, 20 Walks, for 20 years, in 20 weeks.

The donation page is now updated with a link to West End Impacts crowdfunder, which will receive matched funding for donations made up to May 13th (one time per individual), so if you know you are going to sponsor me, and you can manage it before that date, then it would be a good thing to do. All donations of any size are welcome, and all go directly to West End Impact. If you can’t sponsor me, then please consider sharing this blog, with all the details in order to spread it further and hopefully receive sponsorship from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that none of us know. Or if you don’t want or can’t do that, then just enjoy reading about my PromPromProm walks over the next 18 weeks.