Conjuring an image of a magical coastline

Edward Miller’s favourite goose ground was the Solway Firth. Years later, the gift of a painting reminded him of the spell of the place

Ihad called number three son, Jago, a keen goose chaser, into my study to show him a newly received painting. “Where would you say that was?” I asked. His reply was instant: “Rockcliffe Marsh, Middle Creek.”

Bang on, but the odd thing is that Rockcliffe is in the Solway Firth and the artist has never set foot there. My response had been exactly the same, when Ken Measham, septuagenarian fowler and amateur artist, peeled off the bubble wrap from the gift he had brought from his home on the south bank of the Ribble estuary to my place in the Lake District.

Ken and I had met a few months earlier when he had tracked me down after reading a book I had written that began with my teenage goose shooting years on the Solway. Immediately I set eyes on the 3ft by 2ft oil on canvas I was transported back more than 60 years to one particular occasion: I was on the upper reaches of the Firth soon after dawn, crouched low behind the banking of the depicted creek as waves of pink-footed geese headed straight for me. Not something a true fowler, badly bitten by goose fever, could ever forget and so vivid it felt like yesterday.

Since he claimed not to have set foot there, I pressed Ken as to how he had achieved such an accurate depiction of this part of Solway’s unique coast. The unexpected response was a compliment any author would be pleased to hear: “It just came from all your descriptions and the photos.”

One of the still active Solway locals I contacted to discuss the painting was George “Whitie” White, born and bred in Gretna. He had shot on the edge of Rockcliffe since he was 14, for that was the age he happened to be when I gave him his first lift over the Esk in my dinghy pre-dawn.

Shortly after receiving the painting I had it photographed and phoned Whitie to alert him to the imminent

20 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE arrival of the print. I needed to know if he too thought it was Rockcliffe or I was just allowing my imagination to run wild.

“Aye. Definitely Rockcliffe” had been the affirmative in his distinctive Border tones. I tried to tell Whitie that the artist had never been anywhere near the Solway but it fell on unresponsive ears. So much so that he had immediately hightailed it down the road to the home of Raymond Cole, chairman of Gretna Wildfowlers Association. He was equally emphatic, saying: “It’s the creek where the concrete posts used to be.”

At the time of that depicted morning I was in my late teens. First light had come and gone with no sign of geese. I had crossed the Border Esk in a leaky canoe and I was the only fowler in evidence on that October morning but there was every reason to be full of anticipation having Artist Ken Measham, who is nearly 80, is an active fowler

The painting that awakened memories for Edward Miller