From his talk and his demeanour it was obvious that he was now living on the fringes of society in the village, an observer of events rather than a participant. In many ways a sad conversation, it made us think about the consequences of growing older, retirement (particularly if you are going to live on the breadline) and loneliness. When you have everything you need in life like we do, it is easy to forget that it is a very, very thin veneer between being in society and being out of it. It is easy to drop out, but hard and sometimes impossible to scramble back up.
The turn off to cut down on to the river is on a corner and easily missed. There is another cut down to the river on the corner before but it leads to a path that heads up the River Waver rather than down towards the marshes. Once on the river you are not long on its banks before the path takes a sharp left to head out along the tree line in the direction of Calvo Marsh. At this point there is a track / path of sorts to follow, but later it fades into insignificance, disappearing completely at times.
A second dilemma is the herds of cattle that graze the marsh, primarily excitable and frisky stirks which are wont to gallop towards you at any given opportunity. One or two of the herds are quite large. When you have your back to them and can hear their hooves thundering on the ground it doesn't half tighten the sphincter muscles.
The saving grace is that the marsh is riddled with water channels which can stop or slow the cows actually getting to you. Unfortunately, as we found out, there are also crossing points on the channels that the cattle know better than you do. So when they appear to be running away from you (1st cow photo) on the other side of a runnel, they are actually running ahead to a crossing point where they can either wait to ambush you or cross and continue their run towards you. What then ensues in a game between you and them as you jump from one side of a channel to the other, back and forth, in an effort to avoid confrontation. In the 2nd cow photo the herd meandered along slightly in front of us and ever so slightly faster so that they were waiting for us at one of the crossings. On occasion we took very wide detours to avoid the more active ones, skipping across channels to avoid herds which then played havoc with our sense of direction.
The village of Skinburness grew up around an area originally drained by the monks of nearby Holme Cultram Abbey around about 12thC AD. The abbey, which is located in Abbeytown at the beginning of the walk, was a Cistercian Monastery, established about 1150 AD. Like the majority of abbeys in England it was suppressed in 1538 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, set in train under the rule of Henry VIII. The former monastic church now functions as the local parish church. Robert the Bruce's father was buried in the churchyard.
The village subsequently developed as a small port, mainly exporting wool, fish, grain and salt. The area lent itself to the production of salt and the nearby Salt Coates for example, is named after the activity.
Walking by the side of the marsh, heading down the eastern edge of Skinburness, there are lovely colours, textures and sound to the marshes. From the sharp emerald green of the lower grass, to the delicate, elegant shades of textured velvet grey of the taller reeds, from the sound of the gurgling channel waters, to the sough of the wind moving through the reed seed heads there is a cornucopia of sensory experience. At low tide on the opposite (eastern) bank of the Calvo Creek steep, slick mud banks warn of the dangers these waters can carry.
Later in the evening, after enjoying a lovely dinner in our B&B, we went out to enjoy the night air and to take in the sunset over the Solway Firth. It did not disappoint and was a nice ending to a varied day's walking.