Solway Coast
I’m standing in the middle of the Solway Firth, wearing a pair of waders two sizes too big for me and desperately trying not to topple face-first into the muddy water. The water is already flooding around my chest when a sudden surge threatens to whisk my legs out from under me.
Just as I start to lose my footing, I feel a hand grab my belt. ‘Don’t worry,’ says local fishermen Mark Graham, ‘I’ve got you.’ I’m grateful. If his reactions hadn’t been so quick, I might already be bobbing out towards the Irish Sea.
On the edge
I’ve come out with the local haaf-net fishermen to experience the fierce tides that tear up and down the Solway Firth and help to shape the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), a 115-square-kilometre stretch of land on the northeastern coast of Cumbria, separated at its upper end from southwest Scotland by the firth. Because it’s so flat, it’s often forgotten about, and hikers walking the Hadrian’s Wall path, which stops at Bowness-on-Solway in the northern part of the AONB, are frequently advised to leave it out because there’s ‘nothing there’.
But what it does have is plenty of sky (‘Gives us the best sunsets in the world,’ claim the local taxi drivers) and an expanse of land beautifully framed by the Lake District to the south and the Scottish mountains to the north. And, because there are so few tourists, the landscapes – endless cattle farms, sand dunes, salt marshes, peat bogs and raised mires (an unusual ecosystem of mosses and carnivorous plants) – are brimming with wildlife, ranging from dragonflies onshore to dolphins offshore.
The gateway to the region is Silloth, a faded Victorian resort town with a six-strong fleet of sustainable shrimping vessels and a small working port. But it wasn’t always so sedate.
Sitting on the ‘debatable lands’ between Scotland and England, the Solway Coast was once a lawless region roamed by the border ‘reivers’ (otherwise known as robbers) who would slip back and forth across the border running protection rackets and stealing cattle.
Famous reiver clans included the Armstrongs, the Johnstons, the Moffats and the Grahams (historically, it was legal to shoot a Graham on sight). The man holding onto my belt and stopping me from being swept out to sea is a descendant of one of those Grahams. He’s the secretary of the Haaf Netters’ Association, and is currently involved in a battle to keep this traditional method of fishing alive.
‘We’re living archaeology,’ Graham says. ‘There are not many things that have been carried on unchanged for 1,000 years. People have been fishing like this since Viking times.’
Haaf way there
Haaf-net fishing involves walking out into the murky Solway water with a netted frame and waiting for a fish to swim into it. The net is then flipped up, the fish taken out, knocked on the head with a wooden ‘mell’ (club) and then popped into a bag slung over the fisherman’s shoulders. The men go out in all weathers and stand in the water for hours.
‘It’s fishing with a difference,’ says Dougie Hill, the new landlord of the Hope and Anchor pub in Port Carlisle, who is already hooked on haaf-netting and recently caught his first fish. ‘The difference is it’s cold, wet and miserable,’ he jokes. Graham agrees. ‘It’s not for nancy boys. It’s a manly pursuit, and you’ve got to have some bottle.’
The skill, practised locally by everyone from bin men to lawyers, is handed down through family members and friends. It requires an accurate knowledge of the sandbanks and tidal patterns as the men often walk more than a kilometre out across the Solway river bed – dodging treacherous sinking sands on the way – to get to their fishing grounds.
Get it wrong, and the tides, which races in faster than a galloping horse, can cut off the path back to the shoreline and leave you in the drink. ‘We had two who went for a little swim earlier in the week,’ says Graham.
But the tides aren’t the biggest threat to the fishermen, says Graham. He believes the hobby is being ‘restricted to death’ by the Environment Agency, which issues a limited number of licences each year and decides when fishing is allowed – currently only from June to September on weekdays between 10am and 10pm.
This doesn’t allow working men enough time to fish, Graham believes, and is leading to the hobby dying out. ‘Only half of the licences were taken up this year. That’s about 55,’ he says. ‘People just can’t be bothered any more.’ And for this reason, two haaf-netters are currently applying to the high court for a judicial review of the restrictions.
The Environment Agency’s fisheries team leader for Cumbria, Keith Kendall, says these restrictions have been introduced because there ‘are insufficient numbers of salmon and sea trout spawning in these rivers to meet conservation requirements’. He says they form ‘part of a package of measures that apply to both netsmen and anglers’ and says that ‘prior to the introduction of these regulations, the Solway haaf-net fishery was killing twice the number of fish as the combined rod fisheries of the Eden and Border Esk’ – 2006 records show that 2,910 salmon and sea trout were caught by haaf-net fishermen in 2006 and 1,872 by rod fishermen on the Eden River.
But Graham and others believe the river is at or near carrying capacity for salmon, and that the agency’s fish-counting equipment is unable to accurately monitor the proportion of fish being removed by the fishermen. The feeling among local fishermen is that the agency is being encouraged to restrict haaf-net fishing by the wealthy estate owners who own the fishing rights farther up the river. ‘If you’re a riparian owner and you’ve got a business on the river, the only way to increase the value of your assets is to make sure more fish are going up, so you can charge more for the rods per day,’ Graham says.
It’s a claim fiercely denied by Harold Tonge, chairman of the River Eden and District Fisheries Association, whose members fish the waters upstream from the haaf-net fishermen. Tonge sees the argument between river fishermen and haaf-net fishermen as simply a symptom of a wider decline in worldwide salmon and trout numbers due to everything from fish farming to global warming. ‘When there were more fish, there weren’t these arguments,’ Tonge says.
Warts and all
Back on dry land, Solway Coast AONB manager Brian Irving and his team are working hard to protect another struggling local species: the natterjack toad, a rare amphibian that lives in sand dunes and salt marshes. Thirty five of its 55 UK colonies are found within the larger Solway Coast region, and thanks to the AONB staff’s work, numbers are increasing.
‘It’s its own worst enemy,’ Irving says. ‘The toads only breed in ephemeral pools rather than permanent bodies of water. So they produce a string of eggs, but in a couple of weeks the pond’s gone;
it has dried out.’
To help them along, Irving has taken to scooping up the eggs in a bucket and moving them somewhere more suitable. And volunteers have also been working to create more toad-friendly habitats by digging pools, clearing scrub and placing objects around ponds for the amphibians to hide under.
While visitors are unlikely to see a toad, they have a better chance of seeing one of the many large marine animals that are found in abundance just off the coast, including harbour porpoises, basking sharks and bottlenose dolphins. But you have to know what to look for – and Catherine Hooper, Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Shore to Sea project officer is trying to instil just this knowledge in the locals.
I spend a couple of hours with her in Silloth trying to spot the resident porpoise population. ‘You’re looking for a small black triangle looking as though it’s going around and around on a tyre,’ she explains, ‘Or a “footprint”: the still piece of water the porpoise leaves behind when it goes back under water.’
Hooper believes the smallest UK cetacean is underrated. ‘They’re shy and don’t put on the acrobatics of dolphins,’ says Hooper. ‘But they’re still beautiful creatures.’ And, if you get close enough, you can hear them exhaling air. ‘That’s why they’re called “puffing pigs”.’
She believes the reason people go to places such as Scotland or Cornwall to view marine mammals but don’t think of coming to the Cumbrian coast is because it has ‘a bit of an image problem’. ‘People view it as dirty and industrial [the Sellafield nuclear site isn’t far away] but it has started to get cleared up,’ she says. ‘And it’s a lot better than it was.’
Local B&B owner Garry Griffiths believes more needs to be done to publicise the Solway region. ‘We’re like the Lake District’s poor cousin,’ he says. ‘I’m not being funny, but half the people in England don’t even know Cumbria has a coast.’ He thinks the way forward would be a development such as a barrage or marina to capitalise on the area’s waterfront.
But Irving, who is already concerned his area of Cumbria is becoming Britain’s wind farm dustbin, believes its natural assets are attractive enough, talking wistfully of its ‘massive skies’, ‘huge flocks of birds at high tide’ and ‘barnacle geese flying across the moon’. ‘This area doesn’t need to be developed. It needs to be discovered.’
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: top tips for squeezing the best out of the Solway Coast
Where to start your explorations
‘At our new £1million Discovery Centre. It reveals where everything is in the AONB and gives people a chance to understand the issues surrounding the area. There are lots of exhibits inside, ranging from models showing how raised mires are formed to a history of salmon fishing on the Solway.’ Brian Irving, Solway Coast AONB manager
Where to get a taste of the Solway Coast
‘Look out for the wild salmon or trout caught by the haaf-net fishermen on the menu at the Hope and Anchor in Port Carlisle, the King’s Arms in Bowness-on-Solway or the Highland Laddie in Glasson.’ Mark Graham, haaf-net fisherman
Where to spot marine mammals
‘From the benches on the sea wall in Silloth. Look for the birds. Wherever there are birds, there will be fish and, as with any cetacean, that’s where the porpoises will be.’ Catherine Hooper, Shore to Sea project officer
Where to hear the natterjack toads
‘Go down to Grune Point (an hour’s walk from Silloth) on a summer’s night, around twilight. As long as there’s plenty of water in the ponds, you’ll hear the males calling out for a female. The sound can carry up to two kilometres.’ Graeme Proud, Solway Coast AONB volunteer coordinator
September 2008
Just as I start to lose my footing, I feel a hand grab my belt. ‘Don’t worry,’ says local fishermen Mark Graham, ‘I’ve got you.’ I’m grateful. If his reactions hadn’t been so quick, I might already be bobbing out towards the Irish Sea.
On the edge
I’ve come out with the local haaf-net fishermen to experience the fierce tides that tear up and down the Solway Firth and help to shape the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), a 115-square-kilometre stretch of land on the northeastern coast of Cumbria, separated at its upper end from southwest Scotland by the firth. Because it’s so flat, it’s often forgotten about, and hikers walking the Hadrian’s Wall path, which stops at Bowness-on-Solway in the northern part of the AONB, are frequently advised to leave it out because there’s ‘nothing there’.
But what it does have is plenty of sky (‘Gives us the best sunsets in the world,’ claim the local taxi drivers) and an expanse of land beautifully framed by the Lake District to the south and the Scottish mountains to the north. And, because there are so few tourists, the landscapes – endless cattle farms, sand dunes, salt marshes, peat bogs and raised mires (an unusual ecosystem of mosses and carnivorous plants) – are brimming with wildlife, ranging from dragonflies onshore to dolphins offshore.
The gateway to the region is Silloth, a faded Victorian resort town with a six-strong fleet of sustainable shrimping vessels and a small working port. But it wasn’t always so sedate.
Sitting on the ‘debatable lands’ between Scotland and England, the Solway Coast was once a lawless region roamed by the border ‘reivers’ (otherwise known as robbers) who would slip back and forth across the border running protection rackets and stealing cattle.
Famous reiver clans included the Armstrongs, the Johnstons, the Moffats and the Grahams (historically, it was legal to shoot a Graham on sight). The man holding onto my belt and stopping me from being swept out to sea is a descendant of one of those Grahams. He’s the secretary of the Haaf Netters’ Association, and is currently involved in a battle to keep this traditional method of fishing alive.
‘We’re living archaeology,’ Graham says. ‘There are not many things that have been carried on unchanged for 1,000 years. People have been fishing like this since Viking times.’
Haaf way there
Haaf-net fishing involves walking out into the murky Solway water with a netted frame and waiting for a fish to swim into it. The net is then flipped up, the fish taken out, knocked on the head with a wooden ‘mell’ (club) and then popped into a bag slung over the fisherman’s shoulders. The men go out in all weathers and stand in the water for hours.
‘It’s fishing with a difference,’ says Dougie Hill, the new landlord of the Hope and Anchor pub in Port Carlisle, who is already hooked on haaf-netting and recently caught his first fish. ‘The difference is it’s cold, wet and miserable,’ he jokes. Graham agrees. ‘It’s not for nancy boys. It’s a manly pursuit, and you’ve got to have some bottle.’
The skill, practised locally by everyone from bin men to lawyers, is handed down through family members and friends. It requires an accurate knowledge of the sandbanks and tidal patterns as the men often walk more than a kilometre out across the Solway river bed – dodging treacherous sinking sands on the way – to get to their fishing grounds.
Get it wrong, and the tides, which races in faster than a galloping horse, can cut off the path back to the shoreline and leave you in the drink. ‘We had two who went for a little swim earlier in the week,’ says Graham.
But the tides aren’t the biggest threat to the fishermen, says Graham. He believes the hobby is being ‘restricted to death’ by the Environment Agency, which issues a limited number of licences each year and decides when fishing is allowed – currently only from June to September on weekdays between 10am and 10pm.
This doesn’t allow working men enough time to fish, Graham believes, and is leading to the hobby dying out. ‘Only half of the licences were taken up this year. That’s about 55,’ he says. ‘People just can’t be bothered any more.’ And for this reason, two haaf-netters are currently applying to the high court for a judicial review of the restrictions.
The Environment Agency’s fisheries team leader for Cumbria, Keith Kendall, says these restrictions have been introduced because there ‘are insufficient numbers of salmon and sea trout spawning in these rivers to meet conservation requirements’. He says they form ‘part of a package of measures that apply to both netsmen and anglers’ and says that ‘prior to the introduction of these regulations, the Solway haaf-net fishery was killing twice the number of fish as the combined rod fisheries of the Eden and Border Esk’ – 2006 records show that 2,910 salmon and sea trout were caught by haaf-net fishermen in 2006 and 1,872 by rod fishermen on the Eden River.
But Graham and others believe the river is at or near carrying capacity for salmon, and that the agency’s fish-counting equipment is unable to accurately monitor the proportion of fish being removed by the fishermen. The feeling among local fishermen is that the agency is being encouraged to restrict haaf-net fishing by the wealthy estate owners who own the fishing rights farther up the river. ‘If you’re a riparian owner and you’ve got a business on the river, the only way to increase the value of your assets is to make sure more fish are going up, so you can charge more for the rods per day,’ Graham says.
It’s a claim fiercely denied by Harold Tonge, chairman of the River Eden and District Fisheries Association, whose members fish the waters upstream from the haaf-net fishermen. Tonge sees the argument between river fishermen and haaf-net fishermen as simply a symptom of a wider decline in worldwide salmon and trout numbers due to everything from fish farming to global warming. ‘When there were more fish, there weren’t these arguments,’ Tonge says.
Warts and all
Back on dry land, Solway Coast AONB manager Brian Irving and his team are working hard to protect another struggling local species: the natterjack toad, a rare amphibian that lives in sand dunes and salt marshes. Thirty five of its 55 UK colonies are found within the larger Solway Coast region, and thanks to the AONB staff’s work, numbers are increasing.
‘It’s its own worst enemy,’ Irving says. ‘The toads only breed in ephemeral pools rather than permanent bodies of water. So they produce a string of eggs, but in a couple of weeks the pond’s gone;
it has dried out.’
To help them along, Irving has taken to scooping up the eggs in a bucket and moving them somewhere more suitable. And volunteers have also been working to create more toad-friendly habitats by digging pools, clearing scrub and placing objects around ponds for the amphibians to hide under.
While visitors are unlikely to see a toad, they have a better chance of seeing one of the many large marine animals that are found in abundance just off the coast, including harbour porpoises, basking sharks and bottlenose dolphins. But you have to know what to look for – and Catherine Hooper, Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Shore to Sea project officer is trying to instil just this knowledge in the locals.
I spend a couple of hours with her in Silloth trying to spot the resident porpoise population. ‘You’re looking for a small black triangle looking as though it’s going around and around on a tyre,’ she explains, ‘Or a “footprint”: the still piece of water the porpoise leaves behind when it goes back under water.’
Hooper believes the smallest UK cetacean is underrated. ‘They’re shy and don’t put on the acrobatics of dolphins,’ says Hooper. ‘But they’re still beautiful creatures.’ And, if you get close enough, you can hear them exhaling air. ‘That’s why they’re called “puffing pigs”.’
She believes the reason people go to places such as Scotland or Cornwall to view marine mammals but don’t think of coming to the Cumbrian coast is because it has ‘a bit of an image problem’. ‘People view it as dirty and industrial [the Sellafield nuclear site isn’t far away] but it has started to get cleared up,’ she says. ‘And it’s a lot better than it was.’
Local B&B owner Garry Griffiths believes more needs to be done to publicise the Solway region. ‘We’re like the Lake District’s poor cousin,’ he says. ‘I’m not being funny, but half the people in England don’t even know Cumbria has a coast.’ He thinks the way forward would be a development such as a barrage or marina to capitalise on the area’s waterfront.
But Irving, who is already concerned his area of Cumbria is becoming Britain’s wind farm dustbin, believes its natural assets are attractive enough, talking wistfully of its ‘massive skies’, ‘huge flocks of birds at high tide’ and ‘barnacle geese flying across the moon’. ‘This area doesn’t need to be developed. It needs to be discovered.’
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: top tips for squeezing the best out of the Solway Coast
Where to start your explorations
‘At our new £1million Discovery Centre. It reveals where everything is in the AONB and gives people a chance to understand the issues surrounding the area. There are lots of exhibits inside, ranging from models showing how raised mires are formed to a history of salmon fishing on the Solway.’ Brian Irving, Solway Coast AONB manager
Where to get a taste of the Solway Coast
‘Look out for the wild salmon or trout caught by the haaf-net fishermen on the menu at the Hope and Anchor in Port Carlisle, the King’s Arms in Bowness-on-Solway or the Highland Laddie in Glasson.’ Mark Graham, haaf-net fisherman
Where to spot marine mammals
‘From the benches on the sea wall in Silloth. Look for the birds. Wherever there are birds, there will be fish and, as with any cetacean, that’s where the porpoises will be.’ Catherine Hooper, Shore to Sea project officer
Where to hear the natterjack toads
‘Go down to Grune Point (an hour’s walk from Silloth) on a summer’s night, around twilight. As long as there’s plenty of water in the ponds, you’ll hear the males calling out for a female. The sound can carry up to two kilometres.’ Graeme Proud, Solway Coast AONB volunteer coordinator
September 2008
