Day 75 – Piel Island/Walney Island to Barrow-in-Furness

John and Gary are up sufficiently early to make walks (separately) around the island before breakfast – albeit the circumnavigation takes a mere 15 minutes. Wildlife sightings include a fledgling owl making several unsuccessful attempts at flight inside the castle walls, and some extremely vocal oyster catchers looking after their eggs along the shore. (This uncharacteristic Springwatch-ish piece of information reflects the impact of the island – at least on this particular visitor.) We’ll be walking over the sands to Walney Island at low tide around 9 o’clock. Sheila advises us to avoid the nature reserve at the southern end of the island because we could be attacked by gulls protecting their young (sounds like a sensible precaution!) and, before we leave, Steve drives half way over the sands so that we can take the best route by following his tyre tracks. Nothing has been too much trouble for them. After an unsurprisingly good breakfast, the walk to Walney takes just under an hour. Once there, we initially go south through a “holiday park” but then follow Sheila’s advice and turn off at the entrance to the nature reserve and head for the west side of the island. With the tide out, we have an easy couple of hours or so going northwards along the beach with the only debate being whether, to get to the eastern side, we should cut across the island (and if so where) or continue to follow the shoreline. We decide on the latter but, after rounding the northern tip, we soon have to divert into some overgrown fields which take quite a while to find our way through – not helped by the absence of obvious paths and the presence of the perimeter fence of Walney airfield. Even when we’re back near the shore, there are still a few marsh ditches to get over (or around) before we’re confident of being left with a straightforward route to Barrow. It’s now simply a question of whether, to cross back over the Furness, we’ll reach the pedestrian “footbridge” (essentially a series of very large stepping stones) before it’s submerged by the incoming tide, or whether we’ll need to continue a further half mile to the main Walney to Barrow road bridge. We arrive at the footbridge and manage to cross it in time – but only just. A few minutes after getting to the mainland, we look back and the bridge has all but disappeared. A twenty minute walk through the somewhat deserted streets of Barrow gets us to the station in sufficiently good time for cans of cider and sandwiches to be not only purchased but also consumed and the cans supplemented before our train arrives. Our on board drinking is put somewhat in the shade by two couples who are quaffing champagne – a matter of no apparent consequence to their neighbouring passengers or the frequently appearing Northern Rail ticket inspector. Clearly, this is commonplace on the Furness peninsular (?sp Ed). Not sure what they do on our arrival in Lancaster, but we catch our connecting train which John leaves in Warrington for his onward journey to Birmingham whilst Ben and Gary continue to London and the latest tube strike.