I break from the build so as to collect furniture as a favour from the farthest side of Morecambe Bay. This is an area of tidal flats so hazardous that it has warranted an official guide ~ by royal appointment ~ since 1548. Before that time, it was monks at Cartmel Priory who'd guide travellers across these sands by way of a short-cut. In fact where I sketched the route ~ a distance of over ten miles ~ there used to be a horse-drawn carriage service whose schedule was dictated by the tides.
Otherwise you cross these tidal flats at considerable risk, and especially so in fog or encroaching darkness: circs that accounted for two-dozen cockle-pickers as recently as 2004.
Nonetheless the inset provides the sheer acreage unavailable to boats, depending on the state of the tide and its associated currents. As this is replicated in endless locations around the UK, which has the longest coastline in Europe, that's one giant mis-step for boats for humankind.
Which is why admiring the view seaward along this estuary and on to the bay as I drove west of Grange-Upon-Sands, it struck me a boat that might be impervious to the whims of the tide ~ never to be left high and dry on some or other sandbank ~ must surely be of use to someone, somewhere?
