This month marks fifteen-years since the Chinese cockle picking disaster, when twenty-three people drowned in the dark on Morecambe Bay. There is only one occasion when I have been caught out by the tide, and these images show just how easy it is to find yourself in trouble even when you're only twenty or thirty metres from the safety of the shore.
It was a none life-threatening situation which occurred on Wednesday 10th October 2018. I had been making regular visits to Jenny Brown's Point in South Silverdale to photograph and watch the many wading birds which had been gathering in much greater flocks than I had previously seen, when a local resident of Silverdale who takes photographs spotted me just as it became clear that I would be stranded.

It was the same person who also made the first emergency call, soon followed by people living in the nearby cottages. But this was not until after a number of other walkers had stopped to take pictures of me and then continue with their walks. I had made my way along an old bridge which used to cross the deep channel as it feeds its way in to the bay, when the high water tide had begun to wash over the rocks to leave me perched on the dilapidated concrete bridge and unable to wade back to safety. I made the right decision to remain where I was and to wait for the tide to retreat, which it had already started to do by the time the rescue team arrived. They had set off from the lifeboat station in Morecambe, which is some five or six miles away from where I was stranded.

The height of the high water on this day was 9.64 metres according to the tide tables booklet I had with me. This is for Barrow, and I knew that an additional twenty-minutes needed to be added for an estimate at Arnside & Silverdale. The time of this high water was given at 11:52 and I happened to be in the area in time for the tidal bore, which only makes my misjudgement even worse once I'd found my way on to the bridge opposite the old limestone chimney which was once used for copper smelting. I had taken notes in the back page of my tide tables booklet and they offer a good illustration of the timeframe in which the bay is at its most dangerous when the sea rushes in from miles away. It is important to remember that times and heights given in the book are predictions only.

It's important to remember that a high water time given at 11:52 am represents the time at which the tide will be in up to its highest point at full flood. On this particular day, when the weather conditions gave me an advantage, this would have been at around 12:45 pm. One of the challenges I faced was to keep my balance by not looking at the water moving all around me. The raised platform I was on offered some stability. I knew that it was on the edge of a slope and would get extremely deep where the wide channel cuts. The complications of getting trapped by a high tide any further out in Morecambe Bay would be much greater. Every day the tide works at different times and heights and it can be earlier and faster and bigger than the prediction in a tide tables booklet.