Growing up in Barrow-in-Furness a medium to large sized * UK  industrial coastal town engaged primarily in ship building, ** located in the northwestern corner of England all but isolated at the western tip of the Furness peninsula, one was spoiled by the extensive choice of beaches to explore. Most all of them were pummeled and pounded ad infinitum by the almost continually wind swept Atlantic Ocean and its’ local co-conspirator in aquatic violence, the rarely stilled Irish-Sea. 

The Furness peninsula boasts about sixty kilometres of coastline and hence beaches, most all of them readily accessible given an almost complete absence of high cliffs dangerous or otherwise. Inviting sand dunes? No worries lots of them. The peninsula is about thirty kilometres long by give or take maybe fifteen wide. It juts out into both the Irish-Sea and Morecambe Bay the latter being a large estuary *** just south of the Lake District National Park, a priceless natural and national treasure if ever there was one. About sixty kilometres to the west and visible to the naked eye on a clear day is the Isle of Man. 

Located barely beyond Barrow’s town boundaries, Morecambe Bay has the largest expanse of intertidal mudflats and sand in the UK covering 120 sq mi (310 sq km). As children my friends and I knew many of them well. We used to play on those dangerous mudflats. With thirty foot plus tides (roughly nine metres) twice a day incoming and outgoing at considerable speed, we all learned very early on in life to always check the local tidal predictions. Many people have drowned in Morecambe Bay unable to outrun the incoming tide. **** So have horses, both mounted and riderless. If the fast-incoming tide doesn’t get you per se, then the quicksands extant in multiple locations, if coupled also with a laissez faire lack of extreme caution with and respect for; nature will finish you for sure. 

About an hour’s drive from Barrow part way around the Morecambe Bay perimeter, between tides one can then safely walk across the sands, very specifically from Arnside to Grange but absolutely, one must do so with a local guide. It takes about three hours to walk the approximate thirteen kilometres. Apart from the fast-moving tides, shifting channel locations are another contention. Local knowledge is everything. Again, many lives have been lost due to ignorance of the extreme dangers by the uninformed and the unwary. As a child I might have been one of them. Just beyond Barrow my friends once had to dig me out of the quicksands into which I had carelessly trodden and quickly, no pun intended, started sinking. I could not have extricated myself.

Less than a kilometre west of Barrow with a small aerodrome and a population of about 13,000 is Walney Island ***** connected to the mainland by a bridge, the Jubilee bridge. As teenage kids in the mid 1950s my friends and I used to frequently cross that bridge by bicycle headed for Walney’s many fine beaches particularly those on the west and hence open ocean side of the roughly eighteen long by two kilometres wide North South oriented island. It was on one of those beaches that having barely missed ditching, only just making it to terra firma and having then landed just a few feet above the high tide line, was a meteorological balloon upon which we stumbled. 

These days, at least if discovered aloft in the USA, likely Canada and no doubt many other counties, a large unidentifiable balloon would trigger trepidation, consternation and talk of electronic spying. Indeed one just recently did in the USA and with good reason. Having been sighted by members of the public whilst it was very high aloft and drifting with the wind and having a few days later been shot down with a missile fired from a jet fighter (overkill anyone?) an inspection of the resulting debris confirmed that yes indeed, the large unpiloted balloon was on a Chinese spying mission and was well equipped with instruments and multiple battery charging solar panels to do so. 

My teenaged friends and I on the other hand had for sure found a domestic, legitimate unmanned weather tracking balloon known then and perhaps still as a meteorological balloon in the UK. It’s role using multiple onboard instruments being to measure atmospheric conditions and changes in thereof. The routine existence of such balloons in the local skies most everyone in the UK would very likely be aware, if only because Britain gets a trying amount of dynamic as in bad, wet and windy weather. Forecasting is a challenge and meteorological balloons collect a lot of valuable atmospheric data and the constant changes therein. At no time did we kids nor would anyone else in the UK in those salad days one feels certain, think the balloon was spying for China nor for Wales, Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland, Wigan pier, The Isle of Man, Scotland, Canada, Yorkshire, the Outer Hebrides, Mars or anywhere else. OK arguably it might have been launched by extraterrestrials spying perhaps on behalf of their entire known to date universe.

As in high school we had been schooled to do if and when we felt the need for adult help, we looked around for a policeman or woman on the beat – i.e. patrolling an area on foot. In the UK given the police force’s complete absence of guns when on the beat in those days (See notes below) they always had a truncheon to hand in case it might be needed in combination shall we say, with a left uppercut, for self or public protection requirements. It wasn’t long before we sighted a ‘copper’ ******* drew his attention and told him of our discovery which we confidently explained to him was undoubtedly a meteorological balloon it having been described as such in a message attached to it and directed towards anyone finding the craft or what was left of it, if found downed. It had for sure touched down ashore directly albeit barely. It had not washed up on the tide.

Leaving us to guard the balloon and it’s seemingly intact and certainly valuable payload, the policeman made some notes, took our names and addresses, asked us how to spell meteorological (we all knew; he didn’t) and went looking for a pay phone! This was quite some time ago to say the least hence cellphones had yet to be even dreamed of. He eventually reappeared in a police car along with a colleague. They thanked us for our help and drove off with the sorry remains of the balloon inside as well as with some other pieces of it on the car’s roof rack. Presumably they would then have contacted UK weather balloon officialdom. No doubt ultimately, a government department would retrieve the data the various instruments had collected and saved. We felt ‘chuffed’ (very pleased) to use some Barrovian lingo, to have been of help.

Writing this all too true story triggered in my mind a balloon incident I experienced some few months ago. On a sunny clear blue sky day (yes they do occur in winter in Vancouver, Canada) I happened to glance up as I am frequently wont to do. (Aircraft, birds, cloud formations – especially lenticular clouds, planets, moon phases, contrails warning of imminent wet weather, etc) ******* Directly above me and close to our home, perhaps at an altitude of about two hundred feet a UFO, yes an unidentified at least by me, flying object caught my eye. 

The object was traveling east at some speed thanks to the strong prevailing coastal westerly winds aloft, generally fair weather winds in these parts. The low winter sun’s rays were reflecting constantly off the circular vertical surfaces of an object perhaps two maybe three feet in diameter. This not long before the recent Chinese spy or weather balloon brouhaha shenanigans were to engage the USA big time so to speak in triggering their military action directed at what turned out to indeed be a spy balloon. (The only such one out of four large balloons they sighted around the same time.) Not thank God military action directed at China per se, but arguably a close call. Watching my discovery with the naked eye, albeit eyes implanted with the luxury and effectiveness of intraocular lenses, I had no trouble seeing the morse code like periodic flashes being emitted by my mysterious UFO discovery. I also noted a long line dangling from it.

The highly reflective metallic shiny surfaced aerial intruder to no surprise was of course a child’s helium balloon the line having no doubt escaped a tiny clutching hand. I know for sure it was having once been the victim of a surprise ‘latter-day’ birthday party myself. In spite of my having given up counting birthdays, I was non the less presented with a helium filled balloon which I managed not to have escape on me owing to the fact that it never left our living room. (it ‘lived’ for some considerable time on the ceiling.) It was essentially identical to the one I saw airborne and flying free as a bird in the breeze. Given Vancouver is only about twenty kilometres from the US border a change in wind direction could easily have sent it ‘south’ in more ways than one. Not hearing of any airspace issues just south of the 49th parallel at the time, who knows perhaps it made it all the way across Canada and on to China from whence, like so many manufactured goods we consume these days, it came! 

* Population 67,137 in 2018. Barrow-in-Furness was for a very long time time in Lancashire. Later they moved it to Cumbria. Don’t ask!

** Currently building Britain’s next nuclear powered (and armed) submarine. One of myriad nuclear and conventional diesel electric subs built in Barrow including Britain’s first nuclear one, HMS Dreadnought. She was launched in 1960 two years after I left Barrow’s technical high school. She was in service until 1980.

*** The tidal mouth of a large river, where the saltwater meets freshwater.

**** On the evening of 5 February 2004, 23 Chinese illegal immigrants were drowned by an incoming tide at Morecambe Bay while harvesting cockles. 15 others from the same group managed to return safely to shore. Cockles are hard shell clams. Their protective, stout shells and short siphons mean that they do not have to bury as deeply as other common clams. Good cockle beds will often have cockles right on top of the sand on a good tide.  

*****  See my story Aircraft Down May 7, 2022.

****** The term copper was the original word, used in Britain to mean “Someone Who Captures”. In British English, the term cop is recorded (Shorter Oxford Dictionary) in the sense of ’to capture’ from 1704, derived from the Latin capere via the Old French caper. (Who knew!)

******* Condensation trails from aircraft engine exhausts hence contrails in North America. Vapor trails from them if you are a Brit.

RE: Devonald my very uncommon surname is French I discovered after researching it eons ago in a London, UK library specializing in British surnames. I wondered why there was no record of it, ultimately determining it had reached Britain from France during the Norman conquest. (1066-1071) the last successful conquest of England.  

RE: Police firearms. In the United Kingdom police firearm policy varies by constituent countries. In Northern Ireland, all police officers carry firearms whereas in the rest of the United Kingdom, firearms are carried only by specially-trained firearms officers. The arming of police in Great Britain is a much debated topic.

Morecambe Bay is a large estuary in northwest England, just to the south of the Lake District National Park. It is the largest expanse of intertidal mudflats and sand in the United Kingdom, covering a total area of 120 sq mi (310 km²). In 1974, the second largest natural gas field in the UK was discovered under the bay 25 mi (40 km) west of Blackpool, with original reserves of over 7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) (200 billion cubic metres). At its peak, 15% of Britain’s gas supply came from it. 

Walney Bridge was built in 1908 – much to the disgust of the Furness Railway Co. which had operated the ferry. There was then a toll to pay for the bridge.

Cumbria – History – The Jubilee Bridge – the road to Walney

This piece by the BBC makes very interesting reading.

www.visitbarrow.org.uk  BRILLIANT SITE. See also visitbarrow on Instagram.

Barrow-in-Furness is a large industrial town which grew from a tiny 19th Century hamlet to at the turn of the 20th century the biggest iron and steel centre in the world!  (Who knew!)

The Furness Peninsula, also known as Low Furness, is an area of villages, agricultural land and low-lying moorland, with the industrial town of Barrow at its head. The peninsula is bordered by the estuaries of the River Duddon to the west and the River Leven in Morecambe Bay to the east. The wider region of Furness consists of the peninsula and the area known as High Furness, which is a relatively mountainous and sparsely populated part of England, extending inland into the Lake District and containing the Furness Fells. The inland boundary of the region is formed by the rivers Leven, Brathay and Duddon, and the lake of Windermere. Off the southern tip of Furness is Walney Island, 11 miles (18 kilometres) long, as well as several smaller islands.

The Borough of Barrow-in-Furness, which developed when the Furness iron industry flourished in the 19th century, is the region’s largest settlement, with a population of over 91,000. The remainder of Furness is predominantly rural, with Ulverston the only other settlement with more than 10,000 people. Much of High Furness consists of moorland, mountain or woodland environments.

Furness (/ˈfɜːrnɪs, fɜːrˈnɛs/ FUR-niss, fur-NESS) is a peninsula and region of Cumbria in northwestern England. Together with the Cartmel Peninsula it forms North Lonsdale, historically an exclave of Lancashire.

Barrow-in-Furness is a port town in Cumbria, England. Historically in Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness.

Etymology of Furness.

The name ‘Furness’, which is first recorded in 1150 as Fuththernessa, is interpreted as “headland by the rump-shaped island,” from Old Norse futh (genitive futhar), meaning rump, and nes, meaning headland. The island in question may be Piel Island, with the name originally referring to the headland immediately opposite (where Rampside is), before being extended to the entire region. Alternatively it could be Walney Island: though it little resembles a rump today, erosion could have altered its shape over time.