A walk by the Solway Firth

With my teenage daughter, on the second day of January 2025.

We arrive at Southerness lighthouse, on the Solway shore.

The tide is just on the ebb. To our right we can paddle through lapping waters and reach the track beyond. Here we pass huge boulders of white granite, barricaded to protect the properties above. Cockle shells crack and crunch under our feet. Another walker comes towards us, carrying a plastic haul of netting, bottles and single-use detritus.

Wading birds – knot and dunlin – collect on the littoral. We watch them lift in small groups. Then comes a long column in an extended fly past. Difficult to capture on a smart phone. ‘Stay in the moment’ my daughter says, as the squadron passes to our left and lands in the bay beyond.

We come across an archipelago of pools on the salt marsh. Around them, wind bent grasses swirl and sworl. In each pool the brackish water is plated with ice and frosted on the margins. Behind us, tall reeds sway in the light breeze, washed out and drying against the China blue sky.

Here is a single black trainer. We smile, thinking of a friend who takes pictures of such objets perdus. I recall a Scandi-noir novel, where one such trainer also contained a foot.

We stop to examine an improvised lobster pot, fashioned from a plastic fuel can. Lengths of rope lie half buried in the hard sand. On the top of a dune to our right, golfers come into view, preparing to tee off, and bantering in the sharpness of the day. A driftwood branch, like a long lizard, surveys the scene.

Now the sun is dipping lower over the retreating Solway tide, losing its warmth. We stand and look across to the Lakeland fells. The chill is settling in. At the water’s edge we spot a thick tide mark of ice crystals.

Walking on, our steps find an arbitrary turning point, and we decide to head back the way we came. Reaching the Southerness lighthouse, where the walk began, we make New Year resolutions: to do this more often.