I spend a fair bit of time travelling by train. It’s how I usually get to work, and I feel lucky to commute through such exceptional countryside. The West Coast Main Line passes through some splendid places between Lancaster and Carlisle.

I have my favourite sites on the way. I reckon most regular travellers do. The Lowgill Viaduct, south of Tebay, ranks high on my list, as do the grassy slopes of the Howgills.

Then too, mind you, I’m also partial to the back of the Carpetways building in Carlisle. When I see their sign, I know I’m near home.

All in all, though, the most remarkable spot of my journey comes just north of Lancaster. I’m thinking of that stretch of track that runs along Morecambe Bay between Hest Bank and Carnforth. Those three and a half miles can be pretty mesmerising, especially at sunset.

Morecambe is a Celtic name, or so I’m told. Apparently, it means ‘a curve of the sea’, and that certainly goes some ways towards describing the way the bay bends. From Hest Bank, its coastline curls in a broken arc around to Barrow-in-Furness, on the one hand, and out towards Heysham Harbour, on the other.

The crooked, meandering line of the shore is shaped by the rivers Lune, Kent and Leven. Their estuaries merge here, with the waters of the rivers Keer, Wyre and Winster, to form a vast tidal plain. Its saltmarshes, mudflats and channels stretch out over 120 square miles.

The site of the bay has long entranced travellers. It certainly wowed the Lancashire-born writer Edwin Waugh. He made several visits to Morecambe Bay back in the 1850s and ’60s, and he was blown away by the ever-changing scenery.

Edwin Waugh's bookEdwin Waugh's book

“Here,” he wrote, “where the ragged selvedge of our mountain district softens into slopes of fertile beauty by the fitful sea, we flit by many a sylvan nook, and many a country nest, where we should be glad to linger.”

That prose is a bit overblown, but this isn’t the sort of writing for which Waugh is famous. He is better known for his Lancashire dialect works. In this case, though, I’m quoting from a travel book he wrote about travelling around Morecambe Bay on the Ulverstone & Lancaster Railway (U&LR). I really don’t know why the company spelled Ulverston with two Es, but the route of the line they laid in the mid-1850s is still in use today. It is now part of the Furness Line. Travel on it, and you’ll see many of the same ‘sylvan nooks’ Waugh saw, but that’s not the only reason the book intrigues me.

I am fascinated by the way the railways changed tourism in our region, and Waugh’s book provides ample proof of just that. It’s called Over Sands to the Lakes and, in its way, it’s not unlike one of Michael Portillo’s Great British railway journeys; just think more silk top hats and less strawberry corduroy.

Waugh’s book appeared just a few years after the U&LR opened. It was published in Manchester in 1860, and it aimed to entice Mancunian tourists to make day trips to the Lake District.

All they had to do was to get as far as Lancaster or Carnforth and purchase their seat on the over sands line. Inside two hours they’d be in the fells. Today, we might take that for granted (at least when the line is operating). Back then, though, the very idea was marvellous.

Now, I’ll admit that Waugh’s book isn’t really about Morecambe Bay. It’s about the experience of seeing the bay from the window of a railcar. That said, there are several points where he pauses to reflect on the dangers of the old over-sands crossing.

Illustrated London News, 1857Illustrated London News, 1857

Before the coming of the railway, as Waugh explains, the most direct way of travelling to the Lake District from Lancaster involved crossing the sands by carriage, on horseback or on foot. That route entailed a journey of some 20 miles. The going was not necessarily all that bad, but you had to be prepared to get wet. You were going to be fording both the Kent and Leven estuaries at low tide.

From Lancaster, this route ran about three miles to Hest Bank and then some seven to nine miles over the mudflats to either Kents Bank or Cart Lane. From there, it extended over land to Sandgate, near Flookburgh, where it cut across the mouth of the Leven to Sandside, near Ulverston. By 1810, a shorter route between Cark and Ulverston Canal Foot was also in regular use.

In either case the crossing could be perilous, and not simply because of the bay’s quicksands and rapid tides. In poor weather, unwary travellers have lost their way and drowned. The deaths of the 23 cockle pickers who died near Hest Bank ten years ago this year are a grim reminder of a long list of fatalities extending back beyond the 16th century, the era from which the earliest records of over-sands guides (or ‘Carters’) have survived.

A handbill advertising the over-sands coach [Courtesy of Lancaster City Council]A handbill advertising the over-sands coach [Courtesy of Lancaster City Council]

The office of the King’s Guide to the Sands actually dates back to that period. Prior to that time, guides had been provided by local monasteries. After the Reformation, that responsibility was taken up by the Crown. That’s why the King’s Guide to the Sands is a royal appointment.

Thanks to the expert assistance that the King’s Guides provided, the cross-bay route remained an important thoroughfare. By 1781, there was even an over-sands coach service running six days a week, promising a “sober and careful driver” and an “expeditious” crossing.

Such coach services were still going strong in the 1850s, but by the 1880s, they were no longer running. The railway had gradually replaced them. Today, you can still enjoy the journey across the bay by train. And while there are no longer horse-drawn coaches to take you over the sands it is possible to walk across the bay with the King’s Guide on a guided walk.

Why not experience the adventure of travelling around or over Morecambe Bay this summer