Bay Walk from Hest Bank

This was the original and longer route from Hest Bank to Humphrey Head. A hot and hazy day, the other side invisible. Later the walkers, including Project member Hilary Hinds, reappeared as a mirage hovering above the sands.

Bay Walks are mostly held for charity, on the Arnside/Grange over Sands route. New ground was broken even in this area on 20 June 2021, when British Naturism made the first-ever naked walk across the Bay in aid of the British Heart Foundation, led by Sands Guide Michael Wilson, and accompanied on his tractor by Cedric Robinson. Both Guides remained fully clothed. The event was filmed, tactfully, by ITV.

Other walks have included a mounted one by the Vale of Lune Harriers on 30 July 2021, which gives some sense of what Fox and Richard Hubberthorne were attempting; the Duke of Edinburgh’s carriage drive, guided by Cedric Robinson, on 30 May 1985, with 11 other competitors in the Holker Hall Carriage Driving Trials, heralded as the first horse-drawn drive across the Sands for 130 years; and in a less hectic mode, a fund-raiser for Blue Peter in July 2000 with a herd of geese. (This and the Harriers photo are featured on the Guide of Sands Trust’s Image Bank.

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