During the summer of 2023, with the local community, we creatively explored 120 miles of coastline piecing together a picture of our collective hopes and dreams for Morecambe Bay.
Bay Lines – Beach of Dreams was a programme of community participation events celebrating the natural environment, the walking routes and the cycle ways. Working with international arts organisation, Kinetika in collaboration with Rosa Productions, we encouraged people to explore Morecambe Bay on foot (or wheels where suitable) and join in a collective and creative community experience.
Over the summer, we met local residents, artists, walkers, cyclists and nature lovers and each walked their own special section of coastline spanning 120 miles of Morecambe Bay between Walney Island, Barrow and Fleetwood. We gathered photos, drawings and stories about the Morecambe Bay coast to inspire the creation of 120 silk pennants – one per mile. These pennants were then displayed at 4 special events across the Bay over the August Bank Holiday weekend.
Video Production Credits
Commentary: Nigel Thompson
Music: Boum Bike Bourrée, Mbira Jam, Dan Fox and Sound Intervention, More Music, Ethan Sloan
(and at live events) Mizzen Crew
Gathering Walks filming: John Offord, Rosemary Richards, Nigel Thompson with additional material from Tessa Bunney and Amber Woods
Event camera and sequence edits: Bella Richards
Principal camera and edit: John-Martin White
Producer: Rosemary Richards
With thanks to all interviewees and participants in the Bay Lines – Beach of Dreams project produced by Kinetika with Rosa Productions.
Video Production: Rosa Productions
[Music] this is Moran Bay an area stretching from Fleetwood in the South to Barrow and Wy island in the north with salt marsh along the shore and Tides which sweep in and out and surge of the eseries in early summer 2023 we explored 120 M Right Around The Bay with artists photographers filmmakers and local people walking and creatively mapping every mile of the coast and the project culminated over August bank holiday weekend with four installation events the first at waly overlooking the Irish sea then gra and anide on the Levan and Kent esteres and finally on the very busy prominade and beach at moram Bay Lines is part of a national project Beach of dream dreams led by the Arts organization katica and commissioned by the Moran Bay partnership the idea of a beach of Dreams comes from Ali pretty the artistic director whose art form includes long-distance walking and creating visual stories on silk with communities we were looking for creative ways to engage people really around cycling and walking around Moran Bay so it’s all part of a project we’re running called ways Around The Bay um which is to celebrate the amazing landscape and environment of Moran Bay and get it better known um but in a sustainable and active way so getting people out of their cars and and walking and cycling and then we heard about Beach of Dreams um and it seemed to bring together so many different elements of our work so it encouraged walking and you know gental exploration of the the coastline but it also was about the environment and nature and Heritage and these are all themes within the work that we do and it was a great opportunity to really showcase Moran Bay um and you know engage the communities who live here to really feel proud of the [Music] place the coastline here is really spectacular it’s highly protected for wildlife so it’s really important for nature it’s one of the most important places in the UK for um for bird life and the wading Birds particularly it’s a major pit stop for migrating birds and and great stories and a long Heritage from prehistory right through to the more modern fishing Heritage that’s been here and it’s it’s really something we should all be proud of [Music] the eving tide leaves miles of miles of Sands exposed which seems to almost link the towns and Villages Around The Bay I find it just a fascinating area we’re very close to the Lake District where we stood right now and and a lot of people think of the the hills and the mountains but actually those hills and mountains have a coastline which is just stunningly beautiful it’s very unique When the tide is out you have just this huge expanse of sand that means that we’ve got unique nature as well that goes alongside that that it is uh a Half Moon Bay and you can look from one side to the other all the time so it’s it’s a very special place from a nature point of view but to look at as [Music] well the current Crossing is from from anide along to Silverdale and then directly across the the Sands um so where I live you can see people making the crossing every weekend in the summer when the tides are right and it’s an amazing side I’m a fisherman born and bred fisherman I’m a fisherman of the bear that’s what my job is that’s how I earn my money so I’m a fisherman I’m out there nearly every day either catching shrimps or setting Nets or cockling and musling yeah uh the king’s guide was originally set up by Henry VII back in 15408 there was originally four guides to the bear one at es bank one at Kent bank one at flute BR and one at olston and our job is to guide people across the beay at any time right then are we ready good luck guys when we’re on a walk we’ve got a lot of responsibility so we’ve got to look after people but when I’m on my own it’s great in the middle of the night out there8 miles on your own is perfect looking up at the [Music] stars it’s a really unusual landscape the way that it is a bay and the the community kind of is collects around the bay and and is connected by it cuz even though the the mileage and the distance between the communi is quite a lot there’s a sense of all being connected by the bay and also because it’s so dramatic and it’s dangerous as well uh it it is very much part of people’s lives and it gives this place and this space and [Music] identity [Music] Beach of Dreams is a national project exploring the coastline of the entire UK and Ireland and uh it started in uh lowestoft in 2021 and we did 500 Miles um from LOF to Tilbury and the aim is to to gather stories of each mile of the coastline uh what it is what its Heritage is and then to to look out to the Horizon and imagine how we can look after it for the future and Bay Lines throws the focus on the 120 miles around Mora Bay we started uh with some Gathering walks so there was a lot of community engagement getting people to know about the project invite them to come and walk in their s favorite Landscapes and so in June we walked for six days covering the 120 miles talking to people about their stories and then inviting them to to go in think about it take photographs draw and write and submit their content to us and then the part that I was involved in particularly was to translate those photographs into drawings for these silk penants yeah look here we took the submissions we did some drawings and then we came back here and we used the process of batique uh to batique those drawings like block prints uh onto the hand painted silk and then we use um natural dyes so I worked with my uh colleague Les Robinson who um explored the different colors of the bay we decided to use Willow and then Bracken and then D’s greenweed which is very specific to here and gives you this amazing bright yellow which we see the tops as the flags I set off with the Gathering walks in a beautiful week in early June talking to the people we met around the bay and Gathering photos and stories as we went we had these beautiful views and as we walked around the bay we could look back to the previous places we’d walked as and look ahead to what we were going to be visiting the next day or the day after so it was a really good experience for the June walks we split Mor and Bay into six distinct areas we stood at the site of the old Russell Landmark which is probably the true Southern point of Moran Bay the stumps behind us are the only visible remains of this quite historic structure that was in place for several hundred years and on day one Ali and the team of Walkers headed east 20 odd miles from Fleetwood in the direction of Lancaster I chose mile one which is in Fleetwood and I went uh on the beginning of the walk and then I went back later in the day with my camera and I took some new pictures of the landscape I’ve been working as a documentary photographer for 30 years I’m interested in stories and the landscape and people that work on the landscape when I look at a landscape um I’m looking at I want to know who lives there what they do why they do it how they do it and it’s all those kind of combination of things that go into my work crossing the river wire we walked to pilling and met with Marine pilot Andy Bradbury I’m a harbor pilot at Heim and glassen do I went to Primary School in at prol and my school actually backed up to the seaw wall and I remember them been off this seaw wall the seed fences the trees have grown up quite a lot since then looking at the bay the marsh has grown out a lot more over the years it seems to be more marsh land really the sea it’s very Dynamic and it’s always changing I grew up on the wire playing about the on the River Way watching The Ships coming in and out there’s probably quite a bit more shipping in those days coming into he and glass and dark yeah day two of the Gathering walks on a blazing Sunday morning in June Ali was joined by Walker to explore sundland point and the coast up to moram we followed the coast North from sundland point to hesam and at moram we joined up with the Bay beat band from more music to accompany us along the [Music] prominade on day three of the war we started at and the future Coast project is all about restoring um and working with a natural environment to offer to provide a better coastal defense and so right now we’re standing um at a place called um Red Bank Farm or this is Red Bank Marsh um not far from sort of H Bank um and we are currently overlooking uh a really quite nice example of of of salt marsh and salt marsh is a really interesting environment now if you look at it from the position we’re at now it looks sort of like a field you know you you think grassy you know very it’s vegetated you wouldn’t necessarily think Coastal but in actual fact salt marshes are fantastic habitats they really good ecosystems you know we see a lot of birds um Landing feeding and actually nesting on on the site um but they also provide a lot of benefits for us as as humans as well so they’re a really good buffer if you like for uh for waves and tidal forces they help to absorb a lot of that wave energy um help to protect our Coastal communities and that’s why there’s that that mixture of of both human benefits and the ecological benefits to make them so vital to our sort of Northwest coastlines and why we’re so interested in in our future Coast in restoring and helping to protect them and manage them for the future from hes Bank the path took us past Warton cig and the rspb Reserve at Lon moss and along the coast to Silverdale this is Jenny Brown’s point it’s a beauty spot it’s a lovely lovely place um and it’s got quite a few stories around it that that are researched over the years um just a couple of things I I’ll do first you walked alongside Little River um that’s called quicksand pool named because it’s dangerous and separates us from Walton Marsh and it flows out to the Sea here um everyone always asks who was Jenny Brown so I’ll just say a couple of words on Jenny Brown Jenny Brown was B born just the other side of these trees in Dyke House Farm she was born as Janet Walling in the early 17th century she had a daughter who she named Jenny as well so there are two Jenny Browns here she married a brown um we have no idea why her name got stuck on on this beautiful place uh but there are theories and tales and she rescued some children from the sea was one she waved her lover off in his boat never to see him again she kept pigs here uh she kept a house of ill repute here lots of local stories probably none of them true then the walk went on to ansite and then to sto one of my favorite miles where I submitted my photos and story on days four and five the walks continued along the north side of the Kester to gr over Sands and along to car just along the coast on the prominade in gra over Sands we met people passionate to restore the Grange Lio this M’s really special to me um because I don’t live very far away I just live up the hill um and and you know this is our kind of forever home where we’re putting down roots and and staying um and I’ve got very involved with the with the Lido um it’s been closed since 1993 but it is a 1930s Leo and it is so beautiful there’s a whole group of us dedicated to bringing it back I honestly believe it will help to regenerate not just gra but the whole of Moran [Music] Bay every 10 minutes it changes you know people say you don’t have a Telly well why would you we’ve got two walls floor to sealing glass and every time you look out something new is happening with the tide with the birds with the clouds with whatever it’s such a dynamic environment to live in our vision for Bay lines and Beach of Dreams is to look at the gems along our broken fora and that there fact there are so many people now being more aware of the coastline and their relationship to Nature and actually so many people doing projects um with with the future in mind and this is you know a great example of that and will inspire as you’ve inspired many people before I’m sure you’re going to be inspiring more and more people every time they walk past you the last show we did long line the carnival Opera which was done in 2006 um in in a circus ttin over over there by Elston uh that focused a lot on the history of the bay and and I mean it’s extraordinary history in terms of slavery in ter terms of uh people could only cross the Bay by ship or on foot or Carriage a wheel comes off or the horse goes lame you know you hitch up your your kenalin and you run for your life so we are called offc comers because we’ve come in off the Sands not incomers we’re offcers right I love that language thing of how it relates to the environment the walk continued from olon Canal foot hugging the coastline along to the causeway to row Island on the final day of the walk we cross the bridge from Barrow South Wy is the only nature reserve in Cumbria where there’s a colony of gray seals that are actually increasing being so close to the Irish sea it’s really special it’s very Elemental and whenever you step outside you’ve got the sky and the ocean and there’s a lot of wild swimming that you can do best Sunset I’ve ever seen in my life I mean even in winter time it’s quite special as well to be fair it get it does get very stormy but we had some amazing Frost where the entire Reserve was just white as somebody who was raised here and I was raised here during the 1970s as well which was just such a wonderful time to be up at the beach that’s what we did we spent our holidays here during the school we would come up to the beach bring picnics I just feel very much part of the island very deep rooted all of my family’s here ancestral my family are from waly Island and from barwing furnace as well so real part of the [Music] community when I walked my mile we started off at the ferry on walney island and we went down to the very tip down to the South waly Nature Reserve um and then all the way along bigger bank here and right the way down to ery Bay and I chose the section down by ery Bay and we come down ourselves it’s just a nice way to end a busy day and I really wanted to capture the kind of things that my children loved when they were little and they did Rock pooling here and also the houses that have run along the shoreline as well they can look out on our course every day it’s a place where people come to see the sunsets it’s a place where local photographers come down at the end of the night that was my chosen area back at the Wally Island Bridge the walk spanning 120 mies came to an [Music] end [Music] thank you