Everything about Morecambe Bay totally explained
Morecambe Bay is a large bay in northwest
England, nearly due east of the
Isle of Man and just to the south of the
Lake District National Park. It is the largest expanse of intertidal
mudflats and
sand in the
United Kingdom, covering a total area of 310
km².
The rivers
Leven,
Kent,
Keer,
Lune and
Wyre drain into the Bay, with their various estuaries making a number of
peninsulas within the bay, such as
Humphrey Head.
Much of the land around the bay is reclaimed, forming
saltmarshes used in
agriculture. Morecambe Bay is also an important wildlife site, with abundant bird life and varied marine habitats, and there's a
bird observatory at
Walney Island.
The bay is also notorious for its
quicksand and fast moving
tides (it is said that the tide can come in "as fast as a horse can run"). There have been royally appointed local guides (holding the post of
Queen's Guide to the Sands) for crossing the bay for centuries. This difficulty of crossing the bay added to the isolation of the land to its north which, due to the presence of the mountains of the Lake District, could only be reached by crossing these sands or by ferry, until the
Furness Railway was built in 1857. This skirts the edge of the bay, crossing the various estuaries. The
London-
Glasgow railway also briefly runs alongside the bay - interestingly, the only place where the
West Coast Main Line actually runs alongside the coast.
Morecambe Bay was featured on the television programme
Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the North.
Settlement on the Bay
Some 319,100 people live along the coastline of Morecambe Bay, with many of these people residing in the towns listed in the table below. The largest town by far on the bay is Barrow-in-Furness located to the north-west of it, whilst the town which adopted its name from the bay (Morecambe was previously called
Poulton-le-Sands) has a population of around half of Barrow's. Morecambe relied on the bay for many years, as a popular seaside holiday destination, whilst Barrow still relies on the seas for a large percentage of its economy -
Ship and Submarine building.
Bridge proposal
Discussions as to whether to build a road bridge over the bay have been ongoing for decades, particularly in the more isolated north of the bay. The most recent suggestion was of a "green bridge", flanked by wind turbines and using
tidal power to mitigate the environmental damage of its construction
(External Link
). The bridge would be twelve miles long and stretch from
Heysham to
Barrow-in-Furness, at the bay's mouth. Feasibility studies are ongoing, though over two years since this version of the bridge was proposed, little progress has been made. In the
2005 UK General Election,
Timothy Bell polled just 1.1% of the votes in the
Barrow and Furness constituency for the
Build Duddon and Morecambe Bay Bridges Party. For more recent information about the Morecambe Bay Bridge plans
see here.
In 1974
natural gas was discovered offshore, and development of the Morecambe Bay gas field began several years later. A lease has been granted for developing two
wind turbine sites in the bay, one at Walney Island and the other at
Cleveleys. Together these will have around 50 turbines.
Disasters
The bay has rich
cockle beds, which have been fished by locals for generations. On the night of
5 February 2004, at least 21
Chinese immigrant cockle pickers drowned after being cut off by the tides. This tragedy led some commentators to suggest that the cockle beds should be closed until improved safety measures could be introduced.
In 2006, a helicopter crash in Morecambe Bay killed passengers and crew traveling to a nearby off-shore
gas platform.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Morecambe Bay'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://morecambe_bay.totallyexplained.com">Morecambe Bay Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
